Chapter XIX…

Chapter XIX

But well-springs, mortal and immortal, were beginning to bubble up brightly in Beth, despite the hard conditions of her life. She sharpened her wits involuntarily on the people about her, she gathered knowledge where she listed; her further faculty flashed forth fine rays at unexpected intervals to cheer her, and her hungry heart also began to seek satisfaction. For Beth was by nature well-balanced; there was to be no atrophy of one side of her being in order that the other might be abnormally developed. Her chest was not to be flattened because her skull bulged with the big brain beneath. Rather the contrary. For mind and body acted and reacted on each other favourably, in so far as the conditions of her life were favourable. Such congenial intellectual pursuits as she was able to follow, by tranquillising her, helped the development of her physique, while the healthy condition of her body stimulated her to renewed intellectual effort--and it was all a pleasure to her.

At this time she had a new experience, an experience for which she was totally unprepared, but one which helped her a great deal, and delighted as much as it surprised her.

There were high oak pews in the little church at the end of the road which the Caldwells attended on Sunday; in the rows on either side of the main aisle the pews came together in twos, so that when Beth sat at the end of theirs, as she always did, the person in the next pew sat beside her with only the wooden partition between. One Sunday, when she was on her knees, drowsing through the Litany with her cheek on her prayer-book, she became aware of a boy in the next pew with his face turned to her in exactly the same attitude. He had bright fair hair curling crisply, a ruddy fair fat face, and round blue eyes, clear as glass marbles. Beth was pleased with him, and smiled involuntarily. He instantly responded to the smile; and then they both got very red; and, in their delicious shyness, they turned their heads on their prayer-books, and looked in opposite directions. This did not last long, however. The desire for another look seized them simultaneously, and they turned their faces to each other, and smiled again the moment their eyes met. All through the service they kept looking at each other, and looking away again; and Beth felt a strange glad glow begin in her chest and spread gradually all over her. It continued with her the whole day; she was conscious of it throughout the night; and directly she awoke next morning there it was again; and she could think of nothing but the apple-cheeked boy, with bright blue eyes and curly fair hair; and as she dwelt upon his image she smiled to herself, and kept on smiling. There came upon her also a great desire to please, with sudden energy which made all effort easy to her, so that, instead of being tiresome at her lessons, she did them in a way that astonished her mother--such a wonderful incentive is a little joy in life. She would not go out when lessons were over, however, but stood in the drawing-room window watching the people pass. Harriet came and worried her to help with the dusting.

"Go away, you chattering idiot," said Beth. She had found Harriet out in many meannesses by this time, and had lost all respect for her. "Don't you see I'm thinking? If you don't bother me now I'll help you by-and-by, perhaps."

On the other side of the road, in the same row as the Benyon dower-house, but well within sight of the window, was the Mansion-House Collegiate Day and Boarding School for the Sons of Gentlemen. Beth kept looking in that direction, and presently the boys came pouring out in their mortar-boards, and, among them, she soon discovered the one she was thinking of. She discovered him less by sight than by a strange sensation in herself, a pleasure which shot through her from top to toe. For no reason, she stepped back from the window, and looked in the opposite direction towards the church; but she could see him when he came bounding past with his satchel of books under his arm, and she also knew that he saw her. He ran on, however, and going round the corner, where Orchard Row turned off at an angle out of Orchard Street, was out of sight in a moment.

But Beth was satisfied. Indeed she was more than satisfied. She ran into the kitchen, and astonished Harriet by a burst of hilarious spirits, and a wild demand for food, for a duster, for a scrubbing-brush. She wanted to do a lot, and she was hungry.

"You're fond, ah think," said Harriet dryly.

"You're fond, too," Beth cried. "We're all fond! The fonder the better! And I must have something to eat."

"Well, there's nothing for you but bread."

"I must have meat," said Beth. "Rob the joint, and I'll not take any at dinner."

"Ah'd tak' it w'eniver ah could get it, if ah was you," Harriet advised.

"If you was or were me, you'd do as I do," said Beth; "and I won't cheat. If I say I won't take it, I won't. I'm entitled to meat once a day, and I'll take my share now, please; but I won't take more than my share."

"You'll be 'ungry again by dinner-time."

"I know," said Beth. "But that won't make any difference."

She got out the sirloin of beef which was to be roasted for dinner, deftly cut some slices off it, fried them with some cold potatoes, and ate them ravenously, helped by Harriet. When dinner-time came Beth was ravenous again, but she was faithful to her vow, and ate no meat. Harriet scoffed at her for her scrupulousness.

The next day, at the same time, Beth was again in the window, waiting for her boy to come out of the Mansion-House School. When he appeared, the most delightful thrill shot through her. Her first impulse was to fly, but she conquered that and waited, watching him. He made straight for the window, and stopped in a business-like way; and then they laughed and looked into each other's faces.

"What are you doing there?" he asked, as if he were accustomed to see her somewhere else.

"I live here," she said.

"I live in Orchard Row, last house," he rejoined.

"Old Lee's?" Beth inquired.

"Yes, he's my grandfather. I'm Sammy Lee."

"He's a licensed victualler, retired," Beth repeated, drawing upon her excellent verbal memory.

"Yes," said Sammy. "What's yours?"

"I haven't one."

"What's your father?"

"He's dead too."

"What was he?"

"He was a gentleman."

"A retired gentleman?"

"No," said Beth, "an officer and a gentleman."

"Oh," said Sammy. "My father's dead too. He was a retired gentleman."

"What's a retired gentleman?" Beth asked.

"Don't you know?" Sammy exclaimed. "I thought everybody knew that! When you make a fortune you retire from business. Then you're a retired gentleman."

"But gentlemen don't go into business," Beth objected.

"What do they do then?" Sammy retorted.

"They have professions or property."

"It's all the same," said Sammy.

"It isn't," Beth contradicted.

"Yah! you don't know," said Sammy, laughing; and then he ran on, being late for his dinner.

The discussion had been carried on with broad smiles, and when he left her, Beth hugged herself, and glowed again, and was glad in the thought of him. But it was not his conversation so much as his appearance that she dwelt upon--his round blue eyes, his bright fair curly hair, his rosy cheeks. "He is beautiful! he is beautiful!" she exclaimed; then added upon reflection, "And I never thought a boy beautiful before."

The next day she was making rhymes about him in the acting-room, and forgot the time, so that she missed him in the morning; but when he left school in the afternoon she was at the window, and she saw him trotting up the street as hard as his little legs could carry him.

"Where were you at dinner-time?" he said.

"How funny!" she exclaimed in surprise and delight.

"What's funny?" he demanded, looking about him vaguely.

"You were wanting to see me."

"Who told you so?" Sammy asked suspiciously.

"You did yourself just now," Beth answered, her eyes dancing.

"I didn't."

"You did, Sammy."

"You're a liar!" said Sammy Lee.

"Sammy, that's rude," she exclaimed. "And it's not the way to speak to a young lady, and I won't have it."

"Well, but I did not tell you I wanted to see you at dinner-time," Sammy retorted positively.

"Yes, you did, stupid," said Beth. "You asked where I was at dinner-time, and then I knew you had missed me, and you wouldn't have missed me if you hadn't wanted to see me."

"But," Sammy repeated with sulky obstinacy, unable to comprehend the delicate subtilty of Beth's perception,--"But I did not tell you."

"Didn't you want to see me, then?" Beth said coaxingly, waiving the other point with tact.

But Sammy, feeling shy at the question and vaguely aggrieved, looked up and down the street and kicked the pavement with his heel instead of answering.

"I shall go, then," said Beth, after waiting for a little.

"No, don't," he exclaimed, his countenance clearing. "I want to ask you--only you put it out of my head--gels do talk so."

"Gels!" Beth exclaimed derisively. "I happen to be a girl."

Sammy looked at her with a puzzled expression, and forgot what he was going to say. She diverted his attention, however, by asking him how old he was.

"Eleven," Sammy answered promptly.

"So am I. When were you eleven?"

"The twentieth of February."

"Oh, then you're older than me--March, April, May, June--four months. My birthday's in June. What do you do at school? Let's see your books. I wish I went to school!"

"Shu!" said Sammy. "What's the use of sending a gel to school? Gels can't learn."

"So Jim says," Beth rejoined with an absence of conviction that roused Sammy.

"All boys say so," he declared.

"All boys are silly," said Beth. "What's the use of saying things? That doesn't make them true. You're as bad as Jim."

"Who's Jim?" Sammy interrupted jealously.

"Jim's my brother."

Sammy, relieved, kicked his heel on the pavement.

"Which is tallest?" he asked presently, "you or me?"

"I'm tallest, I think," Beth answered; "but never mind. You're the fattest. I've grown long, and you've grown broad."

"You're mighty sharp," said Sammy.

"You're mighty blunt," said Beth. "And you'll be mighty late for tea, too. Look at the church-clock!"

Sammy glanced up, then fled precipitately; and Beth, turning to leave the window, discovered Harriet standing in the background, grinning.

"So you've getten a sweetheart!" she exclaimed. "There's nothing like beginning early."

"So you've been listening again," Beth answered hotly. "Bad luck to you!"

A few days later Mrs. Caldwell was sitting with Lady Benyon, who was in the bow-window as usual, looking out.

"If I am not mistaken," said Lady Benyon suddenly, "there is a crowd collecting at your house."

"What! again?" Mrs. Caldwell groaned, jumping up.

"If I'm not mistaken," Lady Benyon repeated.

Mrs. Caldwell hurried off without even waiting to shake hands. On getting into the street, however, she was relieved to find that Lady Benyon had been mistaken. There was no crowd collecting in Orchard Street, but, as she approached her own house, she became aware of a small boy at the drawing-room window talking to some one within, whom she presently discovered to be Beth.

"What are you doing there, Beth?" she demanded severely. "Who is this boy?"

Beth started. "Sammy Lee," she gasped. "Mr. Lee's grandson at the end of Orchard Row."

"Why are you talking to him?" her mother asked harshly. "I won't have you talking to him. Who will you scrape acquaintance with next?" Then she turned to Sammy, who stood shaking in his shoes, with all the rosy colour faded from his fair fat cheeks, too frightened to stir. "Go away," said Mrs. Caldwell, "you've no business here talking to my daughter, and I won't allow it."

Sammy sidled off, not daring to turn his back full till he was at a safe distance, lest he should be seized from behind and shaken. He was not a heroic figure in retreat, but Beth, in her indignation, noted nothing but the insult that had been offered him. For several days, when her mother was out, she watched and waited for him, anxious to atone; but Sammy kept to the other side of the road, and only cast furtive smiles at her as he ran by. It never occurred to Beth that he was less valiant than she was, or less willing to brave danger for her sake than she was for his. She thought he was keeping away for fear of getting her into trouble; and she beckoned to him again and again in order to explain that she did not care; but he only fled the faster. Then Beth wrote him a note. It was the first she had ever written voluntarily, and she shut herself up in the acting-room to compose it, in imitation of Aunt Grace Mary, whose beautiful delicate handwriting she always did her best to copy--with very indifferent success, however, for the connection between her hand and her head was imperfect. She could compose verses and phrases long before she could commit them to paper intelligibly; and it was not the composition of her note to Sammy that troubled her, but her bad writing. She made a religious ceremony of the effort, praying fervently, "Lord, let me write it well." Every day she presented a miscellaneous collection of petitions to the Lord, offering them up as the necessity arose, being in constant communication with Him. When she wanted to go out, she asked for fine weather; when she did not want to go out, she prayed that it might rain. She begged that she might not be found out when she went poaching on Uncle James's fields; that she might be allowed to catch something; that new clothes might be sent her from somewhere, she felt so ashamed in her dirty old shabby ones. She asked for boots and shoes and gloves, and for help with her lessons; and, when she had no special petition to offer, she would ejaculate at intervals, "Lord, send me good luck!" But, however great the variety of her daily wants, one prayer went up with the others always, "Lord, let me write well!" meaning, let me write a good hand; yet her writing did not improve, and she was much disheartened about it. She took the Lord into her confidence on the subject very frankly. When she had been naughty, and was not found out and punished, she thanked Him for His goodness; but why would He not let her write well? She asked Him the question again and again, lifting her grey eyes to the grey sky pathetically; and all the time, though she never suspected it, she was learning to write more than well, but in a very different sense of the word.

Her note to Sammy was as follows:--

DEAR SAMMY,--Come and talk to me. Do not be afrade. I do not mind rows, being always in them. And she can't do anything to you. I miss you. I want to tell you things. Such nice things keep coming to me. They make me feel all comfortable inside. I looked out of the window in the dark last night. There was a frost. The sky was dark dark blue like sailor's suits only bright and the stars looked like holes bored in the floor of heaven to let the light through. It was so white and bright it must have been the light of heaven. I never saw such light on earth. Sunshine is more buffy. Do come Sammy I want you so Beth. P.S. I can't stop right yet; but I'm trying. It seems rather difficult to stop: but nobody can write without stops. I always look at stops in books when I read but sometimes you put a coma and sometimes a semicollon. I expect you know but I don't so you must teach me. Its so nice writing things down. Come to the back gait tonight.

When the letter was written in queer, crabbed characters, on one side of a half-sheet of paper, then folded so that she could write the address on the other side, because she had no envelope--she wondered how she should get it delivered. There was a coolness between her and Harriet. Beth resented the coarse insinuation about having a sweetheart, and shrank from hearing any more remarks of a like nature on the subject. And she couldn't send the letter by post because she had no stamp. Should she lay it on his doorstep. No, somebody else might get it. How then? She was standing on her own doorstep with the letter in her pocket when she asked herself the question, and just at the moment Sammy himself appeared, coming back from school. Quick as thought, Beth ran across the road, whipped out the letter and gave it to him. Sammy stood still in astonishment with his mouth open, gazing at it when he found it in his hand, as if he could not imagine how it got there.

As soon as it was dark, Beth stationed herself at the back gate, which looked out into Orchard Street, and waited and waited, but Sammy did not come. He had not been able to get out; that was it--she was sure of it; yet still she waited, although the evening was very cold. Her mother and Aunt Victoria had gone to dine with Lady Benyon. She did not know what Harriet was doing, but she had disposed of Bernadine for some time to come by lending her her best picture-book to daub with paint; so it was pretty safe to wait; and at first the hope of seeing Sammy come running round the corner was pleasure enough. As the time went on, however, she became impatient, and at last she ventured a little way up the street, then a little farther, and then she ran on boldly into Orchard Row. As she approached the Lees' back-gate, she became aware of a round thing that looked like a cannon-ball glued to the top, and her fond heart swelled, for she knew it must be Sammy's head.

"O Sammy! why didn't you come?" she cried.

"I didn't like," said Sammy.

"I've been waiting for hours," Beth expostulated with gentle reproach.

"So have I, and it's cold," said Sammy disconsolately.

"Come now. She's out," Beth coaxed.

"So she was the other day," Sammy reminded her.

"But we'll go into the garden. She can't catch us there. It's too dark."

Sammy, half persuaded, ventured out from the gateway, then hesitated.

"But is it very dark?" he said.

"Not so very, when you're used to it," Beth answered. "But it's nice when it's dark. You can fancy you see things. Come! run!" She seized his hand as she spoke, and set off, and Sammy, overborne by the stronger will, kept pace with her.

"But I don't want to see things," he protested, trying to hold back when they came to the dark passage which led into the garden.

"Don't be a fool, Sammy," said Beth, dragging him on. "I believe you're a girl."

"I'm not," said Sammy indignantly.

"Then come and sit on the see-saw."

"Oh, have you a see-saw?" he asked, immediately diverted.

"Yes--this way--under the pear-tree. It's a swing, you know, tied to the branch, and I put this board across it. I pulled the board up out of the floor of the wood-house. Do you like see-sawing?"

"Yes," said Sammy with animation.

"Catch hold, then," said Beth, tipping up the board at her end. "What are you doing, butter-fingers?" she cried, as Sammy failed to catch hold. "I'm sorry I said you were a girl. You're much too clumsy."

She held the board until Sammy got astride of it at one end, then she bestrode it herself at the other, and started it with a vigorous kick on the ground. Up and down they went, shaking showers of leaves from the old tree, and an occasional winter pear, which fell with a thud, being hard and heavy.

"Golly! this is fine!" Sammy burst out. "I say, Beth, what a jolly sort of a girl you are!"

"Do you think so?" said Beth, amply rewarded for all her trouble.

"Yes. And you can write a letter! My! What a time it must 'a' took you! But, I say, it's all rot about stops, you know. Stops is things in books. You'd never learn stops."

"How do you know?" Beth demanded, bridling.

"Men write books," said Sammy, proud of his sex, "not women, let alone gels!"

"That's all you know about it, then!" cried Beth, better informed. "Women do write books, and girls too. Jane Austen wrote books, and Maria Edgeworth wrote books, and Fanny Burney wrote a book when she was only seventeen, called 'Evelina' and all the great men read it."

"Oh!" said Sammy, jeering, "so you're as clever as they are, I suppose!"

Sammy was up in the air as he spoke; the next moment he came down bump on the ground.

"There," said Beth, "that'll teach you. You be rude again if you dare."

"I'll not come near you again, spit-cat," cried Sammy, picking himself up.

"I know you won't," Beth rejoined. "You daren't. You're afraid."

"Who's afraid?" said Sammy, blustering.

"Sammy Lee," said Beth. "Oh, Sammy Lee's afraid of me, riding the see-saw under the tree."

"I say, Beth," said Sammy, much impressed, "did you make that yourself?"

"Make what myself? Make you afraid? Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't," said Sammy, plucking up spirit. "I'm not afraid."

"Then don't be a fool," said Beth.

"Fool yourself," Sammy muttered, but not very valiantly.

The church-clock struck nine. They were standing about, Beth not knowing what to do next, and Sammy waiting for her to suggest something; and in the meantime the night became colder and the darkness more intense.

"I think I'd better take you home," Beth said at last. "Here, give me your hand."

She dragged him out of the garden in her impetuous way, and they scampered off together to Orchard Row, and when they reached the Lees' house they were so warmed and cheered by the exercise that they parted from each other in high good-humour.

"I'll come again," said Sammy.

"Do!" said Beth, giving him a great push that sent him sprawling up the passage. This was the kind of attention he understood, so he went to bed satisfied.

There was only one great interest in life for the people at Rainharbour. Their religion gave them but cold comfort; their labour was arduous and paid them poorly; they had no books, no intellectual pursuits, no games to take them out of themselves, nothing to expand their hearts as a community. There were the races, the fair, and the hirings for excitement, but of pleasure such as satisfies because it is soul-sustaining and continuous enough to be part of their lives, they knew nothing. The upper classes were idle, self-satisfied, selfish, and sensual; the lower were industrious enough, but ignorant, superstitious, and depressed. The gentry gave themselves airs of superiority, really as if their characters were as good as their manners; but they did not impose upon the people, who despised them for their veneer. Each class displayed its contempt for the other openly when it could safely do so, but was ready to cringe when it suited its own convenience, the workers for employment, and the gentry for political purposes. But human beings are too dependent on each other for such differences to exist without detriment to the whole community. Society must cohere if it is to prosper; individuals help themselves most, in the long run, when they consider each other's interests. At Rainharbour nothing was done to promote general good fellowship; the kind of Christianity that was preached there made no mention of the matter, and society was disintegrated, and would have gone to pieces altogether but for the one great interest in life--the great primitive interest which consists in the attraction of sex to sex. The subject of sweethearts was always in the air. The minds of boys and girls, youths and maidens, men and women were all full of it; but it was not often openly discussed as a pleasant topic--in fact, not much mentioned at all except for fault-finding purposes; for it was the custom to be censorious on the subject, and naturally those were most so who knew most about it, like the vicar, who had married four times. He was so rabid that he almost went the length of denouncing men and maidens by name from the pulpit if he caught them strolling about together in pairs. His mind was so constituted that he could not believe their dalliance to be innocent, and yet he did not try to introduce any other interest or pleasure into their lives to divert them from the incessant pursuit of each other.

It was the grown-up people who were so nasty on the subject of sweethearts; the boys and girls never could understand why. Their own inclination was to go about together openly in the most public places; that was how they understood sweethearting; part of the pleasure of it consisted in other people seeing them, and knowing that they were sweethearts, and smiling upon them sympathetically. This, however, the grown-up people never did; on the contrary, they frowned and jeered; and so the boys and girls kept out of their way, and sought secret sympathy from each other.

Any little boy at the Mansion-House School who secured a sweetheart enjoyed a proud distinction, and Sammy soon found that his acquaintance with Beth placed him in quite an enviable position. He therefore let his fear of Mrs. Caldwell lapse, and did his best to be seen with Beth as much as possible. And to her it was a surprise as well as a joy to find him hanging about, waiting to have a word with her. Her mother's treatment of her had so damaged her self-respect that she had never expected anybody to care for her particularly, and Sammy's attentions, therefore, were peculiarly sweet. She did not consider the position at all, however. There are subjects about which we think, and subjects upon which we feel, and the two are quite distinct and different. Beth felt on the subject of Sammy. The fact of his having a cherubic face made her feel nice inside her chest--set up a glow there which warmed and brightened her whole existence--a glow which never flickered day or night, except in Sammy's presence, when it went out altogether more often than not; only to revive, however, when the real Sammy had gone and the ideal Sammy returned to his place in her bosom. For Sammy adored at a distance and Sammy within range of criticism were two very different people. Sammy adored at a distance was all-ready response to Beth's fine flights of imagination; but Sammy on the spot was dull. He was seldom on the spot, however, so that Beth had ample leisure to live on her love undisturbed, and her mind became extraordinarily active. Verse came to her like a recollection. On half-holidays they sometimes went for a walk together over the wild wide waste of sand when the tide was out, and she would rhyme to herself the whole time; but she seldom said anything to Sammy. So long as he was silent he was a source of inspiration--that is to say, her feeling for him was inspiring; but when she tried to get anything out of him, they generally squabbled.

Beth lived her own life at this time almost entirely. Since that startling threat of rebellion, her mother had been afraid to beat her lest she should strike back; scolding only made her voluble, and Mrs. Caldwell never thought of trying to manage her in the only way possible, by reasoning with her and appealing to her better nature. There was, therefore, but one thing for her mother to do in order to preserve her own dignity, and that was to ignore Beth. Accordingly, when the perfunctory lessons were over in the morning, Beth had her day to herself. She began it generally by practising for at least an hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because then there was no one to interrupt her thoughts. When the larder was empty, she became Loyal Heart the Trapper, and would wander off to Fairholm to set snares or catapult anything she could get near. The gun she had found impracticable, because she was certain to have been seen out with it; her snares, if they were found, were supposed to have been set by poachers. She herself was known to every one on the estate, and was therefore sure of respect, no matter who saw her; even Uncle James himself would have let her alone had they met, as he was of her mother's opinion, that it was safer to ignore her than to attempt to control her. The snares, although of the most primitive kind, answered the purpose. The great difficulty was how to get the game home; but that she also managed successfully, generally by returning after dark. Her mother, concluding that she owed whatever came to Aunt Grace Mary's surreptitious kindness, said nothing on the subject except to Beth, whom she supposed to be Aunt Grace Mary's agent; but she very much enjoyed every addition to her monotonous diet, especially when Beth did the cooking. In fact, had it not been for Loyal Heart, the family would have pretty nearly starved that winter, because of Jim, who had contracted debts like a man, which his mother had to pay.

With regard to Beth's cooking, it is remarkable that, although Mrs. Caldwell herself had suffered all through her married life for want of proper training in household matters, she never attempted to have her own daughters better taught. On the contrary, she had forbidden Beth to do servant's work, and objected most strongly to her cooking, until she found how good it was, and even then she thought it due to her position only to countenance it under protest. The extraordinary inefficiency of the good-old-fashioned-womanly woman as a wife on a small income, the silly pretences which showed her want of proper self-respect, and the ill-adjusted balance of her undeveloped mind which betrayed itself in petty inconsistencies, fill us with pity and surprise us, yet encourage us too by proving how right and wise we were to try our own experiments. If we had listened to advice and done as we were told, the woman's-sphere-is-home would have been as ugly and comfortless a place for us to-day as it used to be when Beth was forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her brave struggle against the hard and stupid conditions of her life--conditions which were not only retarding the development, but threatening utterly to distort, if not actually to destroy, all that was best, most beautiful, and most wonderful in her character.

Beth rather expected to get into difficulties eventually about the game, but she calculated that she would have a certain time to run before her head was snapped off, and during that time her mother would enjoy her good dinners and be the better for them, and she herself would enjoy the sport--facts which no amount of anger afterwards could alter. Since Mrs. Caldwell had washed her hands of Beth, they were beginning to be quite good friends. Sometimes her mother talked to her just as she would to anybody else; that is to say, with civility. She would say, "And what are you going to do to-day, Beth?" quite pleasantly, as though speaking to another grown-up person; and Beth would answer politely, and tell the truth if possible, instead of making some sulky evasion, as she had begun to do when there was no other way of keeping the peace. She was fearlessly honest by nature, but as she approached maturity, she lost her nerve for a time, and during that time she lied, on occasion, to escape a harrowing scene. She always despised herself for it, however, and therefore, as she grew stronger, she became her natural straightforward self again, only, if anything, all the more scrupulously accurate for the degrading experience. For she soon perceived that there is nothing that damages the character like the habit of untruth; the man or woman who makes a false excuse has already begun to deteriorate. If a census could be taken to establish the grounds upon which people are considered noble or ignoble, we should find it was in exact proportion to the amount of confidence that can be placed first of all in their sincerity, and then in their accuracy. Sincerity claims respect for character, accuracy estimation for ability; no high-minded person was ever insincere, and no fool was ever accurate.

When the close season began, Beth left the plantations, and took to fishing in the sea. She would sit at the end of the pier in fine weather, baiting her hooks with great fat lob-worms she had dug up out of the sands at low tide, and watching her lines all by herself; or, if it were rough, she would fish in the harbour from the steps up against the wooden jetty, where the sailors hung about all day long with their hands in their pockets when the boats were in. Some of them would sit with her, all in a row, fishing too, and they would exchange bait with her, and give her good advice, while others stood behind looking on and listening. And as of old in Ireland she had fascinated the folk, so here again these great simple bearded men listened with wondering interest to her talk, and never answered at all as if they were speaking to a child. Beth heard some queer things, sitting down there by the old wooden jetty, fishing for anything she could catch, and she said some queer things too when the mood was upon her.

Sometimes, when she wanted to be alone and think, she would go off to the rocks that appeared at low-water down behind the south pier, and fish there. She loved this spot; it was near to nature, yet not remote from the haunts of man. She sat there one afternoon, holding her line, and dreamily watching the fishing boats streaming across the bay, with their brown sails set to catch the fitful breeze which she could see making cat's-paws on the water far out, but could not feel, being sheltered from it by the old stone pier. The sea was glassy smooth, and lapped up the rocks, heaving regularly like the breast of a tranquil sleeper. Beth gazed at it until she was seized with a great yearning to lie back on its shining surface and be gently borne away to some bright eternity, where Sammy would be, and all her other friends. The longing became imperative. She rose from the rock she was sitting on, she raised her arms, her eyes were fixed. Then it was as if she had suddenly awakened. The impulse had passed, but she was all shaken by it, and shivered as if she were cold.

Fortunately the fish were biting well that day. She caught two big dabs, four whitings, a small plaice, and a fine fat sole. The sole was a prize, indeed, and mamma and Aunt Victoria should have it for dinner. As she walked home, carrying the fish on a string, she met Sammy.

"Where did you get those fish?" he asked.

"Caught them," she answered laconically.

"What! all by yourself? No! I don't believe it."

"I did, all the same," she answered; "and now I'm going to cook them--some of them at least."

"Yourself? Cook them yourself? No!" he cried in admiration. Cooking was an accomplishment he honoured.

"If you'll come out after your tea, I'll leave the back-gate ajar, and you can slip into the wood-house; and I'll bring you a whiting on toast, all hot and brown."

With such an inducement, Sammy was in good time. Beth found him sitting contentedly on a heap of sticks, waiting for the feast. She had brought the whiting out with a cover over it, hot and brown, as she had promised; and Sammy's mouth watered when he saw it.

"What a jolly girl you are, Beth!" he exclaimed.

But Beth was not so much gratified by the praise as she might have been. The vision and the dream were upon her that evening, her nerves were overwrought, and she was yearning for an outlet for ideas that oppressed her. She stood leaning against the door-post, biting a twig; restless, dissatisfied; but not knowing what she wanted.

When Sammy had finished the whiting, he remembered Beth, and asked what she was thinking about.

"I'm not thinking exactly," she answered, frowning intently in the effort to find expression for what she had in her consciousness. "Things come into my mind, but I don't think them, and I can't say them. They don't come in words. It's more like seeing them, you know, only you don't see them with your eyes, but with something inside yourself. Do you know what it is when you are fishing off the rocks, and there is no breaking of waves, only a rising and falling of the water; and it comes swelling up about you with a sort of sob that brings with it a whiff of fresh air every time, and makes you take in your breath with a sort of sob too, every time--and at last you seem to be the sea, or the sea seems to be you--it's all one; but you don't think it."

Sammy looked at her in a blank, bewildered way. "I like it best when you tell stories, Beth," he said, under the impression that all this incomprehensible stuff was merely a display for his entertainment. "Come and sit down beside me and tell stories."

"Stories don't come to me to-night," said Beth, with a tragic face. "Do you remember the last time we were on the sands--oh! I keep feeling--it was all so--peaceful, that was it. I've been wondering ever since what it was, and that was it--peaceful;

The quiet people, The old church steeple; The sandy reaches Of wreck-strewn beaches--"

"Who made that up?" said Sammy suspiciously.

"I did," Beth answered offhand. "At least I didn't make it up, it just came to me. When I make it up it'll most likely be quite different. It's like the stuff for a dress, you know, when you buy it. You get it made up, and it's the same stuff, and it's quite different, too, in a way. You've got it put into shape, and it's good for something."

"I don't believe you made it up," said Sammy doggedly. "You're stuffing me, Beth. You're always trying to stuff me."

Beth, still leaning against the door-post, clasped her hands behind her head and looked up at the sky. "Things keep coming to me faster than I can say them to-night," she proceeded, paying no heed to his remark; "not things about you, though, because nothing goes with Sammy but jammy, clammy, mammy, and those aren't nice. I want things to come about you, but they won't. I tried last night in bed, and what do you think came again and again?

Yes, yes, that was his cry, While the great clouds went sailing by; Flashes of crimson on colder sky; Like the thoughts of a summer's day, Colour'd by love in a life which else were grey.

But that isn't you, you know, Sammy. Then when I stopped trying for something about you, there came such a singing! What was it? It seems to have gone--and yet it's here, you know, it's all here," she insisted, with one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her chest, and her eyes straining; "and yet I can't get it."

"Beth, don't get on like that," Sammy remonstrated. "You make me feel all horrid."

"Make you feel," Beth cried in a deep voice, clenching her fists and shaking them at him, exasperated because the verses continued to elude her. "Don't you know what I'm here for? I'm here to make you feel. If you don't feel what I feel, then you shall feel horrid, if I have to kill you."

"Shut up!" said Sammy, beginning to be frightened. "I shall go away if you don't."

"Go away, then," said Beth. "You're just an idiot boy, and I'm tired of you."

Sammy's blue eyes filled with tears. He got down from the heap of sticks, intent on making his escape; but Beth changed her mind when she felt her audience melting away.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"I'm going home," he said deprecatingly. "I can't stay if you go on in that fool-fashion."

"It isn't a fool-fashion," Beth rejoined vehemently. "It's you that's a fool. I told you so before."

"If you wasn't a girl, I'd punch your 'ead," said Sammy, half afraid.

"I believe you!" Beth jeered. "But you're not a girl, anyway." She flew at him as she spoke, caught him by the collar, kicked his shins, slapped his face, and drubbed him on the back.

Sammy, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, made no effort to defend himself, but just wriggled out of her grasp, and ran home, with great tears streaming down his round red cheeks, and sobs convulsing him.

Beth's exasperation subsided the moment she was left alone in the wood-house. She sat down on the sticks, and looked straight before her, filled with remorse.

"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she kept saying to herself. "Oh dear! oh dear! Sammy! Sammy! He's gone. I've lost him. This is the most dreadful grief I have ever had in my life."

The moment she had articulated this full-blown phrase, she became aware of its importance. She repeated it to herself, reflected upon it, and was so impressed by it, that she got up, and went indoors to write it down. By the time she had found pencil and paper, she was the sad central figure of a great romance, full of the most melancholy incidents; in which troubled atmosphere she sat and suffered for the rest of the evening; but she did not think of Sammy again till she went to bed. Then, however, she was seized anew with the dread of losing him for ever, and cried helplessly until she fell asleep.

For days she mourned for him without daring to go to the window, lest she should see him pass by on the other side of the road with scorn and contempt flashing forth from his innocent blue eyes. In the evening, however, she opened the back-gate, as usual, and waited in the wood-house; but he never came. And at first she was in despair. Then she became defiant--she didn't care, not she! Then she grew determined. He'd have to come back if she chose, she'd make him. But how? Oh, she knew! She'd just sit still till something came.

She was sitting on a heap of beech branches opposite the doorway, picking off the bronze buds and biting them. The blanched skeleton of Sammy's whiting, sad relic of happier moments, grinned up at her from the earthen floor. Outside, the old pear-tree on the left, leafless now and motionless, showed distinctly in silhouette against the night-sky. Its bare branches made black bars on the face of the bright white moon which was rising behind it. What a strange thing time is! day and night, day and night, week and month, spring, summer, autumn, winter, always coming and going again, while we only come once, go, and return no more. It was getting on for Christmas now. Another year had nearly gone. The years slip away steadily--day by day--winter, spring. Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust--comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.

The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come and go--no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs--springs, rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain--pain? March storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it brings.

Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the acting-room window. It was open, and she screwed herself in round the bar and fastened the door. It was quite dark under the sloping roof, but she found the end of a tallow candle, smuggled up there for the purpose, lighted it, and stuck it on to the top of the rough deal box which formed her writing-table. She had a pencil, sundry old envelopes carefully cut open so as to save as much of the clean space inside as possible, margins of newspapers, precious but rare half-sheets, and any other scrap of paper on which she could write, all carefully concealed in a hole in the roof, from which she tore the whole treasure now in her haste.

"Winter, summer, Sammy," she kept saying to herself. "Autumn, autumn-tinted woods--my king--Ministering Children--ministering--king. Moon, noon. Story, glory. Ever, never, endeavour. Oh, I can do it! I can! I can! Slips round the steady year--"

It took her some days to do it to her satisfaction, but they were days of delight, for the whole time she felt exactly as she had done when first she found Sammy. She had the same warm glow in her chest, the same sort of yearning, half anxious, half pleasant, wholly desirable.

It was late in the evening when she finished, and she had to put her work away in a hurry, because her mother sent Harriet to tell her she must go to bed; but all night long she lay only half asleep, and all the time conscious of joy to come in the morning.

She was up early, but had too much self-restraint to go to the acting-room till lessons were over. She was afraid of being disturbed and so having her pleasure spoilt. As soon as she could safely lock herself up, however, she took her treasure out. It was written on the precious half-sheets in queer little crabbed characters, very distinctly:--

Slips round the steady year, Days dawn and disappear, Winters and springs; March storms and clouds and rain, Till April once again Light with it brings.

Then comes the summer song, Birds in the woods prolong Day into night. Hot after tepid showers Beats down this sun of ours, Upward the radiant flowers Look their delight.

O summer scents at noon! O summer nights and moon! Season of story. Labour and love for ever Strengthen each hard endeavour, Now climb we up or never, Upward to glory!

Winter and summer past, Autumn has come at last, Hope in its keeping. Beauty of tinted wood, Beauty of tranquil mood, Harvest of earned good Ripe for the reaping.

Thus on a torrid day Slipped my fond thoughts away, Book from thy pages. Seasons of which I sing, Are they not like, my king, Thine own life's minist'ring In all its stages?

First in the spring, I ween, Were all thy powers foreseen-- Storms sowed renown. Then came thy summer climb, Then came thy golden-prime, Then came thy harvest-time, Bringing thy crown.

When Beth had read these lines, she doubled the half sheets on which they were written, and put them in her pocket deliberately. She was sitting on the acting-room floor at the moment, near the window.

"Now," she exclaimed, folding her delicate nervous hands on her lap, and looking up at the strip of sky above her, "now I shall be forgiven!"

It was dark at this time when the boys left school in the evening, and Beth stood at the back-gate waiting to waylay Sammy. He came trotting along by himself, and saw her as he approached, but did not attempt to escape. On the contrary, he stopped, but he had nothing to say; the relief of finding her friendly again was too great for words. Had she looked out, she might have seen him any day since the event, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked as usual, prowling about, anxious to obtain a reassuring smile from her on his way to and from school. It was not likely that he would lose the credit of being Beth Caldwell's sweetheart if he could help it, just because she beat him. Already he had suffered somewhat in prestige because he had not been seen with her so often lately; and he had been quite as miserable in his own way, under the impression that she meant to cast him off, as she had in hers.

"Come in, Sammy," she cried, catching hold of his hand. "Come in, I've something to show you; but it's too cold to sit in the wood-house, and we can't have a light there either. Come up by the pump to the acting-room. I've fastened the door inside, and nobody can get in. Come! I'll show you the way."

Sammy followed her obediently and in silence, although somewhat suspiciously as usual; but she piloted him safely, and, once in the acting-room, with the candle lighted, he owned that it was jolly.

"Sammy, I have been sorry," Beth began. "I've been quite miserable about--you know what. It was horrid of me."

"I told you scratch-cats were horrid," said Sammy solemnly.

"But I've done something to atone," Beth proceeded. "Something came to me all about you. You shall have it, Sammy, to keep. Just listen, and I'll read it."

Sammy listened with his mouth and eyes open, but when she had done he shook his head. "You didn't make that up yourself," he said decidedly.

"O Sammy! yes, I did," Beth protested, taken aback and much pained.

"No, I don't believe you," said Sammy. "You got it out of a book. You're always trying to stuff me up."

"I'm not stuffing you, Sammy," said Beth, suddenly flaming. "I made it myself, every word of it. I tell you it came to me. It's my own. You've got to believe it."

Sammy looked about him. There was no escape by the door, because that led into the house, and Beth was between him and the window, with her brown hair dishevelled, and her big eyes burning.

"Well," he said, a politic desire to conciliate struggling with an imperative objection to be stuffed, "of course you made it yourself if you say so. But it's all rot anyway."

The words slipped out unawares, and the moment he uttered them he ducked his head: but nothing happened. Then he looked up at Beth, and found her gazing hard at him, and as she did so the colour gradually left her cheeks and the light went out of her eyes. Slowly she gathered up her papers and put them into the hole in the roof. Then she sat on one of the steps which led down into the room, but she said nothing.

Sammy sat still in a tremor until the silence became too oppressive to be borne; then he fidgeted, then he got up, and looked longingly towards the window.

"I shall be late," he ventured.

Beth made no sign.

"When shall I see you again?" he recommenced, deprecatingly. "Will you be at the back-gate to-morrow?"

"No," she said shortly. "It's too cold to wait for you."

"Then how shall I see you?" he asked, with a blank expression.

Beth reflected. "Oh, just whistle as you pass," she said at last, in an offhand way, "and I'll come out if I feel inclined."

* * * * *

The next evening Mrs. Caldwell was taking her accustomed nap after dinner in her arm-chair by the fire in the dining-room, and Beth was sitting at the table dreaming, when she was suddenly startled by a long, loud, shrill whistle. Another and another of the most piercing quality followed in quick succession. Swiftly but cautiously she jumped up, and slipped into the drawing-room, which was all in darkness. There were outside shutters to the lower windows, but the drawing-room ones were not closed, so she looked out, and there was Sammy, standing with his innocent fat face as close to the dining-room shutters as he could hold it, with his fingers in his mouth, uttering shrill whistles loud and long and hard and fast enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood. Beth, impatient of such stupidity, returned to the dining-room and sat down again, leaving Sammy to his fate.

Presently Mrs. Caldwell started wide awake.

"What is that noise, Beth?" she exclaimed.

"It seems to be somebody whistling outside," Beth answered in deep disgust. Then her exasperation got the better of her self-control, and she jumped up, and ran out to the kitchen.

"Harriet," she said between her clenched teeth, "go out and send that silly fool away."

Harriet hastened to obey; but at the opening of the front door, Sammy bolted.

The next evening he began again, however, as emphatically as before; but Beth could not stand such imbecility a second time, so she ran out of the back-gate, and seized Sammy.

"What are you doing there?" she cried, shaking him.

"Why, you told me to whistle," Sammy remonstrated, much aggrieved.

"Did I tell you to whistle like a railway engine?" Beth demanded scornfully. "You've no sense at all, Sammy. Go away!"

"Oh, do let's come in, Beth," Sammy pleaded. "I've something to tell you."

"What is it?" said Beth ungraciously.

"I'll tell you if you'll let me come in."

"Well, come then," Beth answered impatiently, and led the way up over the roof to the acting-room. "What is it?" she again demanded, when she had lighted a scrap of candle and seated herself on the steps. "I don't believe it's anything."

"Yes, it is, so there!" said Sammy triumphantly. "But I'll lay you won't guess what it is. Mrs. Barnes has got a baby."

Mrs. Barnes was the wife of the head-master of the Mansion-House School, and all the little boys, feeling that there was more in the event than had been explained to them, were vaguely disgusted.

"I don't call that anything," Beth answered contemptuously. "Lots of people have babies."

"Well," said Sammy, "I wouldn't have thought it of him."

"Thought what of whom?" Beth snapped in a tone which silenced Sammy. He ventured to laugh, however.

"Don't laugh in that gigantic way, Sammy," she exclaimed, still more irritated. "When you throw back your head and open your mouth so wide, I can see you have no wisdom-teeth."

"You're always nasty now, Beth," Sammy complained.

Which was true. Love waning becomes critical. Beth's own feeling for Sammy had been a strong mental stimulant at first, and, in her enjoyment of it, she had overlooked all his shortcomings. There was nothing in him, however, to keep that feeling alive, and it had gradually died of inanition. His slowness and want of imagination first puzzled and then provoked her; and, little-boy-like, he had not even been able to respond to such tenderness as she showed him--not that she had ever showed him much tenderness, for they were just like boys together. She had kissed him, however, once or twice, after a quarrel, to make it up; but she did not like kissing him: little boys are rank. His pretty colouring was all that he had had to attract her, and that, alas! had lost its charm by this time. For a little longer she looked out for him and troubled about him, then let him go gradually--so gradually, that she never knew when exactly he lapsed from her life altogether.

Chapter XX

For two years after Beth was outlawed by her mother, Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was her one link with the civilised world. The intimacy had lapsed a little while Sammy was the prevailing human interest in Beth's life, but gradually as he ceased to be satisfactory, she returned to the old lady, and hovered about her, seeking the sustenance for which her poor little heart ached on always, and for want of which her busy brain ran riot; and the old lady, who had not complained of Beth's desertion, welcomed her back in a way which showed that she had felt it.

For Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was lonely in the days of her poverty and obscurity. Since the loss of her money, there had been a great change in the attitude of most of her friends towards her, and such attentions as she received were of a very different kind from those to which she had been accustomed. Mrs. Caldwell had been the most generous to her, for at the time that she had offered Aunt Victoria a home in her house, she had not known that the old lady would be able to pay her way at all. Fortunately Aunt Victoria had enough left for that, but still her position in Mrs. Caldwell's house was not what it would have been had she not lost most of her means. Mrs. Caldwell was not aware of the fact, but her manner had insensibly adjusted itself to Aunt Victoria's altered circumstances, her care and consideration for her being as much reduced in amount as her income; and Aunt Victoria felt the difference, but said nothing. Slowly and painfully she learnt to realise that it was for what she had had to bestow, and not for what she was, that people used to care; they had served her as they served their God, in the hope of reaping a rich reward. Like many other people with certain fine qualities of their own, Aunt Victoria knew that there was wickedness in the outside world, but never suspected that her own immediate circle, the nice people with whom she talked pleasantly every day, could be tainted; and the awakening to find that her friends cared less disinterestedly for her than she did for them was a cruel disillusion. Her first inclination was to fly far from them all, and spend the rest of her days amongst strangers who could not disappoint her because she would have nothing to expect of them, and who might perhaps come to care for her really. Long hours she sat and suffered, shut up in her room, considering the matter, yearning to go, but restrained by the fear that, as an old woman, she would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria's day old people were only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives more than their own grandmothers were able to enjoy the whole of their declining years; their vitality is so much greater, their appearance so much better preserved; their knowledge so much more extensive, their interests so much more varied, and their hearts so much larger. Aunt Victoria nowadays would have struck out for herself in a new direction. She would have gone to London, joined a progressive women's club, made acquaintance with work of some kind or another, and never known a dull moment; for she would have been a capable woman had any one of her faculties been cultivated to some useful purpose; but as it was, she had nothing to fall back upon. She was just like a domestic animal, like a dog that has become a member of the family, and is tolerated from habit even after it grows old, and because remarks would be made if it were put out of the way before its time; and she had been content with the position so long as much was made of her. Now, however, all too late, a great yearning had seized upon her for an object in life, for some pursuit, some interest that would remain to her when everything else was lost; and she prayed to God earnestly that He would show her where to go and what to do, or give her something--something which at last resolved itself into something to live for.

Then one day there came a little resolute tap at the door, and Beth walked in without waiting to be asked, and seeing in a moment with that further faculty of hers into the old lady's heart that it was sad, she went to her impulsively, and laid her unkempt brown head against her arm in an awkward caress, which touched the old lady to tears. Beth was lonely too, thought Aunt Victoria, a strange, lonely little being, neglected, ill-used, and misunderstood, and the question flashed through the old lady's mind, if she left the child, what would become of her? The tangled brown head, warm against her arm, nestled nearer, and Aunt Victoria patted it protectingly.

"Do you want anything, Beth?" she asked.

"No, Aunt Victoria. I just wanted to see you. I was lying on the see-saw board, looking up through the leaves, and I suddenly got a fancy that you were here all by yourself, and that you didn't like being all by yourself. I feel like that sometimes. So I came to see you."

"Thank you, Beth," said Aunt Victoria, with her hand still on Beth's head as if she were blessing her; and when she had spoken she looked up through the window, and silently thanked the Lord. This was the sign. He had committed Beth to her care and affection, and she was not to think of herself, but of the child, whose need was certainly the greater of the two.

"Have you nothing to do, Beth?" she said after a pause.

"No, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered drearily--"at least there are plenty of things I could do, but everything I think of makes me shudder. I feel so sometimes. Do you? There isn't a single thing I want to do to-day. I've tried one thing after the other, but I can't think about what I'm doing. Sometimes I like to sit still and do nothing; but to-day I don't even like that. I think I should like to be asked to do something. If I could do something for you now--something to help you----"

"Well, you can, Beth," Aunt Victoria answered, after sitting rigidly upright for a moment, blinking rapidly. "Help me to unpick an old gown. I am going to make another like it, and want it unpicked for a pattern."

"Can you make a gown?" Beth asked in surprise.

Aunt Victoria smiled. Then she took down an old black gown that was hanging behind the door, and handed it to Beth with a pair of sharp scissors.

"I'll undo the body part," Beth said, "and that will save your eyes. I don't think this gown owes you much."

"I do not understand that expression, Beth," said Aunt Victoria.

"Don't you," said Beth, working away with the scissors cheerfully. "Harriet always says that, when she's got all the good there is to be got out of anything--the dusters, you know, or the dishcloth. I once did a piece of unpicking like this for mamma, and she didn't explain properly, or something--at all events, I took out a great deal too much, so she----"

"Don't call your mamma 'she.' 'She' is the cat."

"Mamma, then. Mamma beat me."

"Don't say she beat you."

"I said mamma."

"Well, don't talk about your mamma beating you. That is not a nice thing to talk about."

"It's not a nice thing to do either," said Beth judicially. "And I never used to talk about it; didn't like to, you know. But now she--mamma--doesn't beat me any more--at least only sometimes when she forgets."

"Ah, then, you have been a better girl."

"No, not better--bigger. You see if I struck her back again she wouldn't like it."

"Beth! Beth! strike your mother!"

"That was the danger," said Beth, in her slow, distinct, imperturbable way. "One day she made me so angry I very nearly struck her, and I told her so. That made her look queer, I can tell you. And she's never struck me since--except in a half-hearted sort of way, or when she forgot, and that didn't count, of course. But I think I know now how it was she used to beat me. I did just the same thing myself one day. I beat Sammy----"

"Who is Sammy?" said Aunt Victoria, looking over her spectacles.

"Sammy Lee, you know."

Aunt Victoria recollected, and felt she should improve the occasion, but was at a loss for a moment what to say. She was anxious above everything that Beth should talk to her freely, for how could she help the child if she did not know all she had in her mind? It is upon the things they are never allowed to mention that children brood unwholesomely.

"I thought that you were not allowed to know Sammy Lee," she finally observed.

"No more I was," Beth answered casually.

"Yet you knew him all the same?" Aunt Victoria ventured reproachfully.

"Aunt Victoria," said Beth, "did the Lord die for Sammy?"

"Ye--yes," said Aunt Victoria, hesitating, not because she doubted the fact, but because she did not know what use Beth would make of it.

"Then why can't I know him?" Beth asked.

"Oh, be--because Sammy does not live as if he were grateful to the Lord."

"If he did, would he be a gentleman?" Beth asked.

"Yes," Aunt Victoria answered decidedly.

Beth stopped snipping, and looked at her as if she were looking right through her, and out into the world beyond. Then she pursed up her mouth and shook her head.

"That won't hold water," she said. "If a man must live like the Lord to be a gentleman, what is Uncle James? And if living like the Lord makes a man a gentleman, why don't we call on old Job Fisher?"

Aunt Victoria began to fear that the task she had undertaken would prove too much for her. "It is hard, very hard," she muttered.

"Well, never mind," said Beth, resuming her work. "When I grow up I mean to write about things like that. But what were we talking about? Oh, beating Sammy. I did feel bad after I beat him, and I vowed I'd never do it again however tiresome he was, and I never did. It makes it easier if you vow. It's just as if your hands were tied then. I'd like to tell mamma to try it, only she'd be sure to get waxy. You tell her, Aunt Victoria."

Aunt Victoria made some reply which was lost in the noise of vehicles passing in the street, followed by the tramp of many feet and a great chattering. An excursion train had just arrived, and the people were pouring into the place. Beth ran to the window and watched them.

"More confounded trippers," she ejaculated. "They spoil the summer, swarming everywhere."

"Beth, I wish, to please me, you would make another vow. Don't say 'confounded trippers.'"

"All right, Aunt Victoria. Jim says it. But I know all the bad words in the language were made for the men. I suppose because they have all the bad thoughts, and do all the bad things. I shall say 'objectionable excursionists' in future." She went to the door. "I'm just going to get something," she said. "You won't go away now, will you? I shall be a minute or two, but I want you to be here when I come back. I shall be wild if you're not."

She banged the door after her and ran downstairs.

Aunt Victoria looked round the room; it no longer seemed the same place to her. Beth's cheerful chatter had already driven away the evil spirit of dejection, and taken the old lady out of herself. Untidy child! She had left her work on the floor, her scissors on the bed, disarranged the window-curtain, and upset a chair. If she would not do any more unpicking when she returned, she must be made to put things straight. There was one little easy-chair in the room. Aunt Victoria sat down in it, a great piece of self-indulgence for her at that time of day, folded her hands, and closed her weary old eyes just to give them a rest, while a nice little look of content came into her face, which it was good to see there.

When she opened her eyes again, Beth was setting a tray on a tiny table beside her.

"I think you've been having a nap, Miss Great-Aunt Victoria Bench," she said. "Now, have some tea! and buttered toast!!"

"O Beth!" cried the old lady, beaming. "How could you--at this time of day? Well, to please you. It is quite delicious. So refreshing. What, another piece of toast! Must I take another?"

"You must take it all," said Beth. "I made it for you. I do like doing things for you, Aunt Victoria. It makes me feel nice all over. I'll just unpick a little more. Then I'll tidy up."

"You're a good child to think of that," said Aunt Victoria. "I did not think you would."

"Didn't you?" said Beth. "How funny! But I like things tidy. I often tidy up."

"I--I suppose Harriet says tidy up," the old lady observed gently, not liking to be censorious at this happy moment of relaxation, but still anxious to do her duty. Beth understood her perfectly and smiled.

"I like you to tell me when I say things wrong," she said; "and I like to know how Harriet talks too. You can't write if you don't know how every one talks."

"What are you going to write?" Aunt Victoria asked, taking up another piece of buttered toast.

"Oh, books," Beth answered casually.

"Write something soul-sustaining then, Beth," said Aunt Victoria. "Try to make all you say soul-sustaining. And never use a word you would be ashamed to hear read aloud."

"You mean like those things they read in church?" said Beth. "I don't think I ever could use such words. When Mr. Richardson comes close to them, I get hot all over and hate him. But I promise you, Aunt Victoria, I will never write anything worse than there is in the Bible. There's a man called Ruskin who writes very well, they say, and he learnt how to do it from reading the Bible. His mother taught him when he was a little boy, just as you taught me. I always read the Bible--search the Scriptures--every day. You say it's a sacred book, don't you, Aunt Victoria? Harriet says it's smutty."

"Says what?" Aunt Victoria exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in her horror. "What does she mean by such an expression?"

"Oh, she just means stories like Joseph and Potiphar's wife, David and Bathsheba, Susanna and the elders."

"My dear child!" Aunt Victoria gasped.

"Well, Aunt Victoria, they're all in the Bible, at least Susanna and the elders isn't. That's in the Apocrypha."

Aunt Victoria sat silent a considerable time. At last she said solemnly: "Beth, I want you to promise me one thing solemnly, and that is that all your life long, whatever may be before you, whatever it may be your lot to learn, you will pray to God to preserve your purity."

"What is purity?" said Beth.

Aunt Victoria hesitated: "It's a condition of the mind which keeps us from ever doing or saying anything we should be ashamed of," she finally decided.

"But what kind of things?" Beth asked.

Unfortunately Aunt Victoria was not equal to the occasion. She blinked her eyes very hard, sipped some tea, and left Beth to find out for herself, according to custom.

"We must only talk about nice things," she said.

"Well, I shouldn't care to talk nastily about people as Lady Benyon does sometimes," Beth rejoined.

"But, my dear child, that is not a nice thing to say about Lady Benyon."

"Isn't it?" said Beth, then added: "Oh dear, how funny things are!" meaning how complicated.

"Where did you get this tea, Beth?" said Aunt Victoria. "It is very good, and I feel so much the better for it."

"I thought you wanted something," said Beth. "Your face went all queer. That means people want something. I got the tea out of the store-cupboard. It has a rotten lock. If you shake it, it comes open."

"But what does your mamma say?"

"Oh, she never notices. Or, if she does, she thinks she left it open herself. Harriet has a little sometimes. She takes it because she says mamma should allow her a quarter of a pound of dry tea a week, so it isn't stealing. And I took it for you because you pay to live here, so you're entitled to the tea. I don't take it for myself, of course. But I'm afraid I oughtn't to have told you about Harriet. I'm so sorry. It slipped out. It wasn't sneaking. But I trust to your honour, Aunt Victoria. If you sneaked on Harriet, I could never trust you again, now could I?" She got up as she spoke, folded her work, picked up the chair, arranged the window-curtain, moved the tray, and put the table back in its place, at the same time remarking: "I shall take these things downstairs now, and go for a run."

She left Aunt Victoria with much to reflect upon. The glimpse she had accidentally given the old lady of Harriet's turpitude had startled her considerably. Mrs. Caldwell had always congratulated herself on having such a quiet respectable person in the house as Harriet to look after Beth, and now it appeared that the woman was disreputable both in her habits and her conversation, the very last person whom a girl, even of such strongly marked individuality as Beth, should have been allowed to associate with intimately. But what ought Miss Victoria to do? If she spoke to Mrs. Caldwell, Beth would never forgive her, and the important thing was not to lose Beth's confidence; but if she did not speak to Mrs. Caldwell, would she be doing right? Of course, if Mrs. Caldwell had been a different sort of person, her duty would have been clear and easy; but as it was, Aunt Victoria decided to wait.

The next day Beth returned of her own accord to finish the unpicking. She wanted to know what "soul-sustaining" meant; and in ten minutes she had cross-questioned Aunt Victoria into such a state of confusion that the old lady could only sit silently praying to Heaven for guidance. At last she got up, and took a little packet out of one of her trunks. She had to live in her boxes because there was no closet or wardrobe or chest of drawers in the room.

"See, Beth," she said, "here is some tea and sugar. I don't think it nice of you to go to your mother's cupboard without her leave. That's rather a servant's trick, you know, and not honest; so give it up, like a dear child, and let us have tea together, you and I, up here, when we want it. I very much enjoy a good cup of tea, it is so refreshing, and you make it beautifully."

Beth changed colour and countenance while Aunt Victoria was speaking, and she sat for some time afterwards looking fixedly at the empty grate; then she said, "You always tell me things nicely, Aunt Victoria; that's what I like about you. I'll not touch the cupboard again, I vow; and if you catch me at any other 'servant's tricks' just you let me know."

The old lady's heart glowed. The Lord was showing her how to help the child.

But the holidays were coming on; she would have to go away to make room for the boys; and she dreaded to leave Beth at this critical time, lest she should relapse, just as she was beginning to form nice feminine habits. For Beth had taken kindly to the sewing and tea-drinking and long quiet chats; it was a delight to her to have some one to wait on, and help, and talk to. "I'm so fond of you, Aunt Victoria," she said one day; "I even like you to snap at me; and if we lived quite alone together, you and I, I should do everything for you."

"Would you like to come away with me these holidays?" said Aunt Victoria, seized suddenly with a bright idea.

"Oh, wouldn't I!" said Beth. "But then, the expense!"

"I think I can manage it, if your mamma has no objection," said Aunt Victoria, nodding and blinking, and nodding again, as she calculated.

"I should think mamma would be only too glad to get rid of me," said Beth hopefully.

And she was not mistaken.

Chapter XXI

The next few weeks, in their effect upon Beth's character, were among the most important of her life. She did not know until the day before where she was to go with Aunt Victoria. It was the habit of the family to conceal all such arrangements from the children, and indeed from each other as much as possible. Aunt Victoria observed that Caroline was singularly reticent, and Mrs. Caldwell complained that Aunt Victoria made a mystery of everything. It was a hard habit, which robbed Beth of what would have been so much to her, something to look forward to. Since she knew that she was to go somewhere, however, she had lived upon the idea; her imagination had been busy trying to picture the unknown place, and her mind full of plans for the comfort of Aunt Victoria.

It was after breakfast one day, while her mother and Aunt Victoria were still at table, that the announcement was made. "You need not do any lessons this morning, children," Mrs. Caldwell said. "Beth is going to Harrowgate with Aunt Victoria to-morrow, and I must see to her things and get them packed."

Aunt Victoria looked round at Beth with a carefully restrained smile, expecting some demonstration of joy. Beth was standing in the window looking out, and turned with a frown of intentness on her face when her mother mentioned Harrowgate, as if she were trying to recall something.

"Harrowgate!" she said slowly. "Harrowgate!"

"Beth, do not frown so," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed irritably. "You'll be all wrinkled before you're twenty."

Beth gazed at her solemnly without seeing her, then fixed her eyes upon the ground as if she were perusing it, and began to walk slowly up and down with her head bent, her hands clasped behind her, her curly brown hair falling forward over her cheeks, and her lips moving.

"What is it you're muttering, child?" Aunt Victoria asked.

"I'm trying to think," Beth rejoined.

"''Twas in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool....

* * * * *

"'Two sudden blows with a ragged stick, And one with a heavy stone....

* * * * *

"'And yet I feared him all the more, For lying there so still....

* * * * *

"'I took the dreary body up.'...

"Ah, I know--I have it!" she exclaimed joyfully, and with a look of relief; "Harrowgate--Knaresboro'--the cave there----

"'Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walked between, With gyves upon his wrist.'"

"My dear child," said Aunt Victoria sternly, "what is it you are trying to say? and how often are you to be told not to work yourself up into such a state of excitement about nothing?"

"Don't you know about Eugene Aram, Aunt Victoria?" Beth rejoined with concern, as if not to know about Eugene Aram were indeed to have missed one of the great interests of life. Then she sat down at the table with her elbows resting on it, and her delicate oval face framed in her slender hands, and gave Aunt Victoria a graphic sketch of the story from Bulwer Lytton.

"Dear me, Caroline," said Aunt Victoria, greatly horrified, "is it possible that you allow your children to read such books?"

"I read such books to my children myself when I see fit," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "I may be allowed to judge what is good for them, I suppose?"

"Good for them!" Aunt Victoria ejaculated. "Accounts of murder, theft, and executions!"

"But why not, Aunt Victoria?" Beth put in. "Why not read about Eugene Aram as well as about Barabbas?"

Aunt Victoria looked so shocked, however, at the mention of Barabbas in this connection, that Beth broke off and hastened to add for the relief of the old lady's feelings--"Only of course Barabbas was a sacred sort of thief, and that is different."

On the journey next day a casual remark let fall by a stranger made a curious impression upon Beth. They were travelling second-class, and Aunt Victoria, talking to another lady in the carriage, happened to mention that Beth was twelve years old. A gentleman, the only other passenger, who was sitting opposite to Beth, looked up at her over his newspaper when her age was mentioned, and remarked--"Are you only twelve? I should have thought you were older. Rather nice-looking too, only freckled."

Beth felt her face flush hotly, and then she laughed. "Nice-looking! Nice-looking!" She repeated the words to herself again and again, and every time they recurred to her, she lost countenance in spite of herself, and laughed and flushed, being strangely surprised and pleased.

It was that remark that first brought home to Beth the fact that she had a personal appearance at all. Hitherto she had thought very little of herself. The world without had been, and always would be, much more to her than the world within. She was not to be one of those narrow, self-centred, morbid beings whose days are spent in introspection, and whose powers are wasted in futile efforts to set their own little peculiarities forth in such a way as to make them seem of consequence. She never at any time studied her own nature, except as a part of human nature, and in the hope of finding in herself some clue which would help her to a sympathetic understanding of other people.

Great-Aunt Victoria Bench, in these days of her poverty, lodged with an old servant of the family, who gave her for ten shillings a week a bedroom at the top of the house, and a little sunny sitting-room on the ground-floor at the back, looking out into an old-fashioned garden, full of flowers such as knights in olden times culled for their ladies. The little sitting-room was furnished with Chippendale chairs, and a little Chippendale sideboard with drawers, and a bookcase with glass doors above and a cupboard below, in which Aunt Victoria used to keep her stores of tea, coffee, sugar, and currants in mustard-tins. Beth heard with surprise that the hearthrug was one which Aunt Victoria had worked herself as a present for Prentice when she married. Prentice was now Mrs. Pearce, but Aunt Victoria always called her Prentice. The hearthrug was like a Turkey carpet, only softer, deeper, and richer. Aunt Victoria had sat on Chippendale chairs in her youth, and she was happy amongst them. When she sat down on one she drew herself up, disdaining the stiff back and smiled and felt young again, while her memory slipped away to pleasant days gone by; and Mrs. Pearce would come and talk to her, standing respectfully, and reminding her of little things which Aunt Victoria had forgotten, or alluding with mysterious nods and shakings of the head to other things which Beth was not to hear about. When this happened Beth always withdrew. She was becoming shy of intruding now, and delicate about overhearing anything that was not intended for her; and when she had gone on these occasions, the two old ladies would nod and smile to each other, Prentice in respectful approval, and Aunt Victoria in kindly acknowledgment. Prentice wore a cap and front like Aunt Victoria, but of a subdued brown colour, as became her humble station.

Beth took charge of the housekeeping as soon as they arrived, made tea, arranged the groceries in the cupboard, and put the key in her pocket; and Aunt Victoria, who was sitting upright on a high Chippendale chair, knitting, and enjoying the dignity of the old attitude after her journey, looked on over her spectacles in pleased approval. Before they went to bed, they read the evening psalms and lessons together in the sitting-room, and Aunt Victoria read prayers. When they went upstairs they said their private prayers, kneeling beside the bed, and Aunt Victoria made Beth wash herself in hot water, and brush her hair for half-an-hour. Aunt Victoria attributed her own slender, youthful figure and the delicate texture of her skin to this discipline. She said she had preserved her figure by never relaxing into languid attitudes, and her complexion by washing her face in hot water with fine white soap every night, and in cold water without soap every morning. She did not take her fastidious appetite into consideration, nor her simple, regular life, nor the fact that she never touched alcohol in any shape or form, nor wore a tight or heavy garment, nor lost her self-control for more than a moment whatever happened, but Beth discovered for herself, as she grew older, that these and that elevated attitude of mind which is religion, whatever the form preferred to express it, are essential parts of the discipline necessary for the preservation of beauty.

In the morning Beth made breakfast, and when it was over, if crusts had accumulated in the cupboard, she steeped them in hot milk in a pie-dish, beat them up with an egg, a little butter, sugar, currants, and candied peel, and some nutmeg grated, for a bread-pudding, which Prentice took out to bake for dinner, remarking regularly that little miss promised to be helpful, to which Aunt Victoria as regularly responded Yes, she hoped Miss Beth would become a capable woman some day.

After breakfast they read the psalms and lessons together, verse by verse, and had some "good talk," as Beth called it. Then Aunt Victoria got out an old French grammar and phrase-book, a copy of "Telemaque," and a pocket-dictionary, treasured possessions which she always carried about with her, and had a kind of pride in. French had been her speciality, but these were the only French books she had, and she certainly never spoke the language. She would have shrunk modestly from any attempt to do so, thinking such a display almost as objectionable as singing in a loud professional way instead of quietly, like a well-bred amateur, and showing a lack of that dignified reserve and general self-effacement which she considered essential in a gentlewoman.

But she was anxious that Beth should be educated, and therefore the books were produced every morning. Mrs. Caldwell had tried in vain to teach Beth anything by rule, such as grammar. Beth's memory was always tricky. Anything she cared about she recollected accurately; but grammar, which had been presented to her not as a means to an end but as an end in itself, failed to interest her, and if she remembered a rule she forgot to apply it, until Aunt Victoria set her down to the old French books, when, simply because the old lady looked pleased if she knew her lesson and disturbed if she did not, she began at the beginning of her own accord, and worked with a will--toilsomely at first, but by degrees with pleasure as she proceeded, and felt for the first time the joy of mastering a strange tongue.

"You learnt out of this book when you were a little girl, Aunt Victoria, didn't you?" she said, looking up on the day of the first lesson. She was sitting on a high-backed chair at one end of the table, trying to hold herself as upright as Aunt Victoria, who sat at the other and opposite end to her, pondering over her knitting. "I suppose you hated it."

"No, I did not, Beth," Aunt Victoria answered severely. "I esteemed it a privilege to be well educated. Our mother could not afford to have us all instructed in the same accomplishments, and so she allowed us to choose French, or music, or drawing and painting. I chose French."

"Then how was it grandmamma learned drawing and painting, and playing, and everything?" Beth asked. "Mamma knows tunes she composed."

"Your dear grandmamma was an exceedingly clever girl," Aunt Victoria answered stiffly, as if Beth had taken a liberty when she asked the question; "and she was the youngest, and desired to learn all we knew, so we each did our best to impart our special knowledge to her. I taught her French."

"How strange," said Beth; "and out of this very book? And she is dead. And now you are teaching me."

The feeling in the child's voice, and the humble emphasis on the pronoun me, touched the old lady; something familiar too in the tone caused her to look up quickly and kindly over her spectacles, and it seemed to her for a moment as if the little, long-lost sister sat opposite to her--great grey eyes, delicate skin, bright brown hair, expression of vivid interest, and all.

"Strange! strange!" she muttered to herself several times.

"I am supposed to be like grandmamma, am I not?" said Beth, as if she read her thoughts.

"You are like her," Aunt Victoria rejoined.

"But you can be a plain likeness of a good-looking person, I suppose?" Beth said tentatively.

"Certainly you can," Miss Victoria answered with decision; and the spark of pleasure in her own personal appearance, which had recently been kindled in Beth, instantly flickered and went out.

Their little sitting-room had a bow-window down to the ground, the front part of which formed two doors with glass in the upper part and wood below, leading out into the garden. On fine days they always stood wide open, and the warm summer air scented with roses streamed in. Both Beth and Aunt Victoria loved to look out into the garden. From where Beth sat to do her French at the end of the table, she could see the soft green turf, a bright flower-border, and an old brick wall, mellowed in tone by age, behind it; and a little to the left, a high, thick screen of tall shrubs of many varieties, set so close that all the different shades of green melted into each other. The irregular roof of a large house, standing on lower ground than the garden, with quaint gables and old chimneys, rose above the belt of shrubs; the tiles on it lay in layers that made Beth think of a wasp's nest, only that they were dark-red instead of grey; but she loved the colour as it appeared all amongst the green trees and up against the blue sky. She often wondered what was going on under that roof, and used to invent stories about it. She did not write anything in these days, however, but stored up impressions which were afterwards of inestimable value to her. The smooth grey boles of the beeches, the green down on the larches, the dark, blue-green crown which the Scotch fir held up, as if to accentuate the light blue of the sky, and the wonderful ruddy-gold tones that shone on its trunk as the day declined; these things she felt and absorbed rather than saw and noted, but because she felt them they fired her soul, and resolved themselves into poetic expression eventually.

They dined early, and on the hot afternoons they sat and worked together after dinner, Beth sewing and Aunt Victoria knitting, until it was cool enough to go out. Aunt Victoria was teaching Beth how to make some new underclothing for herself, to Beth's great delight. All of her old things that were not rags were patches, and the shame of having them so was a continual source of discomfort to her; but Aunt Victoria, when she discovered the state of Beth's wardrobe, bought some calico out of her own scanty means, and set her to work. During these long afternoons, they had many a conversation that Beth recollected with pleasure and profit. She often amused and interested the old lady; and sometimes she drew from her a serious reprimand or a solemn lecture, for both of which she was much the better. Aunt Victoria was severe, but she was sympathetic, and she was just; she seldom praised, but she showed that she was satisfied, and that was enough for Beth; and she never scolded or punished, only spoke seriously when she was displeased, and then Beth was overwhelmed.

One very hot day when they were working together, Aunt Victoria sitting on a high-backed chair with her back to the open doors because the light was too much for her eyes, and Beth sitting beside her on a lower seat, but so that she could look up at her, and also out into the garden, it occurred to her that once on a time, long ago, Aunt Victoria must have been young, and she tried artfully to find out first, if Aunt Victoria remembered the fact, and secondly, what little girls were like at that remote period.

"Was your mamma like mine, Aunt Victoria?" she asked.

Aunt Victoria had just made a mistake in her knitting, and answered shortly: "No, child."

"When you were all children," Beth pursued, "did you play together?"

"Not much," Aunt Victoria answered grimly.

"Did you quarrel?"

"My dear child! what could put such a notion into your head?"

"What did you do then?" said Beth. "You couldn't have been all the time learning to sit upright on a high-backed chair; and I am trying so hard to think what your home was like. I wish you would tell me."

"It was not at all like yours," Aunt Victoria replied with emphasis. "We were most carefully brought up children. Our mother was an admirable person. She lived by rule. If one of her children was born at night, it was kept in the house until the morning, and then sent out to nurse until it was two years old. If it was born by day, it was sent away at once."

"And didn't great-grandmamma ever go to see it?"

"Yes, of course; twice a year."

"I think," said Beth, reflecting, "I should like to keep my babies at home. I should want to put their little soft faces against mine, and kiss them, you know."

"Your great-grandmamma did her duty," said Aunt Victoria with grim approval. "She never let any of us loll as you are doing now, Beth. She made us all sit up, as I always do, and as I am always telling you to do; and the consequence was our backs grew strong and never ached."

"And were you happy?" Beth said solemnly.

Aunt Victoria gazed at her vaguely. She had never asked herself the question. Then Beth sat with her work on her lap for a little, looking up at the summer sky. It was an exquisite deep blue just then, with filmy white clouds drawn up over it like gauze to veil its brightness. The red roofs and gables and chimneys of the old house below, the shrubs, the dark Scotch fir, the copper-beech, the limes and the chestnut stood out clearly silhouetted against it; and Beth felt the forms and tints and tones of them all, although she was thinking of something else.

"Mamma's back is always aching," she observed at last, returning to her work.

"Yes, that is because she was not so well brought up as we were," Aunt Victoria rejoined.

"She says it is because she had such a lot of children," said Beth. "Did you ever have any children, Aunt Victoria?"

Miss Victoria Bench let her knitting fall on her lap--"My--dear--child!" she gasped, holding up both her hands in horror.

"Oh, I forgot," said Beth. "Only married ladies have children. Servants have them, though, sometimes before they are married, Harriet says, and then they call them bad girls. Grandmamma wasn't as wise as great-grandmamma, I suppose, but perhaps great-grandmamma had a good husband. Grandpapa was an awful old rip, you know."

Aunt Victoria stared at her aghast.

"He used to drink," Beth proceeded, lowering her voice, and glancing round mysteriously as the old servants at Fairholm did when they discussed these things; "and grandmamma couldn't bear his ways or his language, and used to shut herself up in her own room more and more, and they never agreed, and at last she went quite mad, so the saying came true. Did you never hear the saying? Why, you know her father's crest was a raven, and grandpapa's crest was a bee, and for generations the families had lived near each other and never been friends; and it was said, if the blood of the bees and the ravens were ever put in the same bowl it wouldn't mingle. Do you say 'if it were,' or 'if it was,' Aunt Victoria? Mamma says 'if it were.'"

"We were taught to say 'if it was,'" Aunt Victoria answered stiffly; "but your mamma may know better."

Beth thought about this for a minute, then set it aside for further inquiry, and dispassionately resumed. "That was a mean trick of Uncle James's, but it was rather clever too; I should never have thought of it. I mean with the fly, you know. When grandpapa died, Uncle James got his will and altered it, so that mamma mightn't have any money; and he put a fly in grandpapa's mouth, and swore that the will was signed by his hand while there was life in him."

"My dear child," said Aunt Victoria sharply, "who told you such a preposterous story?"

"Oh, I heard it about the place," Beth answered casually; "everybody knows it." She took another needleful of thread, and sewed on steadily for a little, and Aunt Victoria kept glancing at her meanwhile, with a very puzzled expression.

"But what I want to know is why did grandmamma stay with grandpapa if he were, or was, such a very bad man?" Beth said suddenly.

"Because it was her duty," said Aunt Victoria.

"And what was his duty?"

"I think, Beth," said the old lady, "you have done sewing enough for this afternoon. Run out into the garden."

Beth knew that this was only an excuse not to answer her, but she folded her work up obediently, observing as she did so, however, with decision, "If I ever have a bad husband, I shall not stay with him, for I can't see what good comes of it."

"Your grandmamma had her children to think of," said Aunt Victoria.

"But what good did she do them?" Beth wanted to know. "She devoted herself to Uncle James, but she didn't make much of a man of him! And she had no influence whatever with mamma. Mamma was her father's favourite, and he taught her to despise grandmamma because she couldn't hunt, and shrieked if she saw things killed. I think that's silly myself, but it's better than being hard. Of course mamma is worth a dozen of Uncle James, but--" Beth shrugged her shoulders, then added temperately, "You know mamma has her faults, Aunt Victoria, it's no use denying it. So what good did grandmamma do by staying? She just went mad and died! If she'd gone away, and lived as you do, she might have been alive and well now."

"Ah, my dear child," said the old lady sorrowfully, "that never could have been; for I have observed that no woman who marries and becomes a mother can ever again live happily like a single woman. She has entered upon a different phase of being, and there is no return for her. There is a weight of meaning in that expression: 'the ties of home.' It is 'the ties of home' that restrain a loving woman, however much she suffers; there are the little daily duties that no one but herself can see to; and there is always some one who would be worse off if she went. There is habit too; and there are those small possessions, each one with an association of its own perhaps, that makes it almost a sacred thing; but above all, there is hope--the hope that matters may mend; and fear--the fear that once she deserts her post things will go from bad to worse, and she be to blame. In your grandmamma's day such a thing would never have been thought of by a good woman; and even now, when there are women who actually go away and work for themselves, if their homes are unhappy--" Aunt Victoria pursed up her lips, and shook her head. "It may be respectable, of course," she concluded magnanimously; "but I cannot believe it is either right or wise, and certainly it is not loyal."

"Loyal!" Beth echoed; "that was my father's word to me: 'Be loyal.' We've got to be loyal to others; but he also said that we must be loyal to ourselves."

Aunt Victoria had folded up her knitting, and now rose stiffly, and went out into the garden with an old parasol, and sat meditating in the sun on the trunk of a tree that had been cut down. She often sat so under her parasol, and Beth used to watch her, and wonder what it felt like to be able to look such a long, long way back, and have so many things to remember.

Chapter XXII

Aunt Victoria was surprised herself to find how kindly Beth took to a regular life, how exact she was in the performance of her little housekeeping duties, and how punctual in everything; she had never suspected that Beth's whole leaning was towards law and order, nor observed that even in her most lawless ways there was a certain system; that she fished, and poached, and prowled, fought Bernadine, and helped Harriet, as regularly as she dined, and went to bed. Habits, good or bad, may be formed in an incredibly short time if they are congenial; the saints by nature will pray, and the sinners sin, as soon as the example is set them; and Beth, accordingly, fell into Aunt Victoria's dainty fastidious ways, which were the ways of a gentlewoman, at once and without effort; and ever afterwards was only happy in her domestic life when she could live by the same rule in an atmosphere of equal refinement--an honest atmosphere where everything was done thoroughly, and every word spoken was perfectly sincere. Of course she relapsed many times--it was her nature to experiment, to wander before she settled, to see for herself; but it was by intimacy with lower natures that she learned fully to appreciate the higher; by the effect of bad books upon her that she learned the value of good ones; by the lowering of her whole tone which came of countenancing laxity in others, and by the discomfort and degradation which follow on disorder, that she was eventually confirmed in her principles. The taste for the higher life, once implanted, is not to be eradicated; and those who have been uplifted by the glory of it once will strive to attain to it again, inevitably.

It was through the influence of this time that the most charming traits in Beth's character were finally developed--traits which, but for the tender discipline of the dear old aunt, might have remained latent for ever.

It would be misleading, however, to let it be supposed that Beth's conduct was altogether satisfactory during this visit. On the contrary, she gave Miss Victoria many an anxious moment; for although she did all that the old lady required of her, she did many other things besides, things required of her by her own temperament only. She had to climb the great tree at the end of the lawn, for instance, in order to peep into the nest near the top, and also to see into the demesne beyond the belt of shrubs, where the red-roofed house stood, peopled now by friends of her fancy. This would not have been so bad if she had come down safely; but a branch broke, and she fell and hurt herself, which alarmed Miss Victoria very much. Then Miss Victoria used to send her on errands to develop her intelligence; but Beth invariably lost herself at first; if she only had to turn the corner, she could not find her way back. Aunt Victoria tried to teach her to note little landmarks in her own mind as she went along, such as the red pillar-box at the corner of the street where she was to turn, and the green shutters on the house where she was to cross; and Beth noticed these and many more things carefully as she went, and could describe their position accurately afterwards; but, by the time she turned, the vision and the dream would be upon her as a rule, and she would walk in a world of fancy, utterly oblivious of red pillar-boxes, green shutters, or anything else on earth, until she was brought up wondering by a lamp-post, tree, or some unoffending person with whom she had collided in her abstraction; then she would have to ask her way; but she was slow to find it by direction; and all the time she was wandering about, Aunt Victoria would be worrying herself with fears for her safety until she was quite upset.

Beth was rebellious, too, about some things. There was a grocery shop at one end of the street, kept by a respectable woman, but Beth refused to go to it because the respectable woman had a fussy little Pomeranian dog, and allowed it to lick her hands and face all over, which so disgusted Beth that she could not eat anything the woman touched. It was in this shop that Beth picked up the moribund black beetle that kicked out suddenly, and set up the horror of crawling things from which she ever afterwards suffered. This was another reason for not going back to the shop, but Aunt Victoria could not understand it, and insisted on sending her. Beth was firmly naughty in the matter, however, and would not go, greatly to the old lady's discomposure.

One means of torture, unconsciously devised by Aunt Victoria, tried Beth extremely. Aunt Victoria used to send her to church alone on Sunday afternoons to hear a certain eloquent preacher, and required her to repeat the text, and tell her what the whole sermon was about on her return. Beth did her best, but if she managed to remember the text by repeating it all the time, she could not attend to the sermon, and if she attended to the sermon, she invariably forgot the text. It was another instance of the trickishness of her memory; she could have remembered both the text and sermon without an effort had she not been afraid of forgetting them.

But the thing that gave her aunt most trouble of mind was Beth's habit of making acquaintance with all kinds of people. It was vain to warn her, and worse than vain, for the reasons Aunt Victoria gave her for not knowing people only excited her interest in them, and she would wait about, watching, to see for herself, studying their habits with the patient pertinacity of a naturalist. The drawing-room floor was let to a lady whose husband was at sea, a Mrs. Crome. She was very intimate with a gentleman who also lodged in the house, a friend of her husband's, she said, who had promised to look after her during his absence. Their bedrooms adjoined, and Beth used to see their boots outside their doors every morning when she went down to breakfast, and wonder why they got up so late.

"Out again together nearly all last night," Prentice remarked to Aunt Victoria one morning; and then they shook their heads, but agreed that there was nothing to be done. From this and other remarks, however, Beth gathered that Mrs. Crome was going to perdition; and from that time she had a horrid fascination for Beth, who would gaze at her whenever she had an opportunity, with great solemn eyes dilated, as if she were learning her by heart--as, indeed, she was--involuntarily, for future reference; for Mrs. Crome was one of a pronounced type, as Beth learnt eventually, when she knew the world better, an example which helped her to recognise other specimens of the kind whenever she met them.

She scraped acquaintance with Mrs. Crome on the stairs, at last, and was surprised to find her as kind as could be, and was inclined to argue from this that Prentice and Aunt Victoria must be mistaken about her. But one evening Mrs. Crome tempted her into the drawing-room. The gentleman was there, smoking a cigar and drinking whisky-and-water; and there was something in the whole aspect and atmosphere of the room that made Beth feel exceedingly uncomfortable, and wish she was out of it immediately.

"Aren't you very dull with that old lady?" said Mrs. Crome. "I suppose she never takes you to the theatre or anything."

"No," said Beth; "she does not approve of theatres."

"Then I suppose she doesn't approve of me?" Mrs. Crome observed good-naturedly.

"No," said Beth solemnly; "she does not."

Mrs. Crome burst out laughing, and so did the gentleman.

"This is rich, really," he said. "What a quaint little person!"

"Oh, but she's sweet!" said Mrs. Crome; and then she kissed Beth, and Beth noticed that she had been eating onions, and for long afterwards she associated the smell with theatres, frivolous talk, and a fair-haired woman smiling fatuously on the brink of perdition.

Aunt Victoria retired early to perform her evening ablutions, and on this occasion she had gone up just as usual, with a little bell, which she rang when she was ready for Beth to come. In the midst of the talk and laughter in the drawing-room the little bell suddenly sounded emphatically, and Beth fled. She found Aunt Victoria out on the landing in her petticoat and dressing-jacket, and without her auburn front, a sign of great perturbation. She had heard Beth's voice in the drawing-room, and proceeded to admonish her severely. But Beth heard not a word; for the sight of the old lady's stubbly white hair had plunged her into a reverie, and already, when the vision and the dream were upon her, no Indian devotee, absorbed in contemplation, could be less sensitive to outward impressions than Beth was. Aunt Victoria had to shake her to rouse her.

"What are you thinking of, child?" she demanded.

"Riding to the rescue," Beth answered dreamily.

"Don't talk nonsense," said Aunt Victoria. Beth gazed at her with a blank look. She was saving souls just then, and could attend to nothing else.

Beth's terror of the Judgment never returned; but after she had been away from home a few weeks she began to have another serious trouble which disturbed her towards evening in the same way. The first symptom was a curious lapse of memory which worried her a good deal. She could not remember how much of the garden was to be seen from her mother's bedroom window at home, and she longed to fly back and settle the question. Then she became conscious of being surrounded by the country on every side, and it oppressed her to think of it. She was a sea-child, living inland for the first time, and there came upon her a great yearning for the sight and sound of moving waters. She sniffed the land-breeze, and found it sweet but insipid in her nostrils after the tonic freshness of the sea-air. She heard the voice of her beloved in the sough of the wind among the trees, and it made her inexpressibly melancholy. Her energy began to ebb. She did not care to move about much, but would sit silently sewing by the hour together, outwardly calm, inwardly all an ache to go back to the sea. She used to wonder whether the tide was coming in or going out; wonder if the fish were biting, how the sands looked, and who was on the pier. She devoured every scrap of news that came from home in the hope of finding something to satisfy her longing. Bernadine wrote her an elaborate letter in large hand, which Beth thought very wonderful; Harriet sent her a letter also, chiefly composed of moral sentiments copied from the Family Herald, with a view to producing a favourable impression on Miss Victoria; and Mrs. Caldwell wrote regularly once a week, a formal duty-letter, but a joy to Beth, to whom letters of any kind were a new and surprising experience. She had never expected that any one would write to her; and in the first flush of her gratitude she responded with enthusiasm, sending her mother, in particular, long descriptions of her life and surroundings, which Mrs. Caldwell thought so good she showed them to everybody. In replying to Beth, however, she expressed no approval or pleasure; on the contrary, she put Beth to shame by the way she dwelt on her mistakes in spelling, which effectually checked the outpourings, and shut Beth up in herself again, so that she mourned the more. During the day she kept up pretty well, but towards twilight, always her time of trial, the yearning for home, for mamma, for Harriet, for Bernadine, began again; the most gloomy fears of what might be happening to them in her absence possessed her, and she had great difficulty in keeping back her tears. Aunt Victoria noticed her depression, but mistook it for fatigue, and sent her to bed early, which Beth was glad of, because she wanted to be alone and cry. But one evening, when she was looking particularly sad, the old lady asked if she did not feel well.

"Yes, I feel quite well, thank you, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered with a great sigh; "but I know now what you meant about home-ties. They do pull strong."

"Ah!" said Aunt Victoria, enlightened; "you are homesick, are you?"

And from that day forward, when she saw Beth moping, she took her out of herself by making her discuss the subject, and so relieved her; but Beth continued to suffer, although less acutely, until her return.

Chapter XXIII

Rainharbour was not yet deserted by summer visitors, although it was late in the autumn when Beth and Aunt Victoria returned. It had been such a lovely season that the holiday people lingered, loath to leave the freshness of the sea and the freedom of the shore for the stuffy indoor duties and the conventional restrictions of their town lives.

On the day of their arrival, Beth looked about her in amaze. She had experienced such a world of change in herself since she went away, that she was surprised to find the streets unaltered; and yet, although they were unaltered, they did not look the same. It was as if the focus of her eyes had been readjusted so as to make familiar objects seem strange, and change the perspective of everything; which gave the place a different air, a look of having been swept and garnished and set in order like a toy-town. But the people they passed were altogether unchanged, and this seemed stranger still to Beth. There they had been all the time, walking about as usual, wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts; they had had no new experiences, and, what was worse, they were not only unconscious of any that she might have had, but were profoundly indifferent; and to Beth, on the threshold of life, all eager interest in everything, caring greatly to know, and ready to sympathise, this vision of the self-centred with shrivelled hearts was terrible; it gave her the sensation of being the one living thing that could feel in a world of automata moved by machinery.

Bernadine and her mother had met them at the station, but Beth was so busy looking about her, collecting impressions, she had hardly a word to say to either of them. Mrs. Caldwell set this down as another sign of want of proper affection, but Aunt Victoria grumped that it was nothing but natural excitement.

The first thing Beth did after greeting Harriet, who stood smiling at the door, was to run upstairs to her mother's bedroom to settle the question of how much of the garden was visible from the window; and then she rushed on up to the attic, dragged a big box under the skylight in hot haste, and climbed up on it to look at the sea. It was the one glimpse of it to be had from the house, just a corner, where the water washed up against the white cliffs that curved round an angle of the bay. Beth flung the skylight open, and gazed, then drew in her breath with a great sigh of satisfaction. The sea! The sea! Even that glimpse of it was refreshing as a long cool drink to one exhausted by heat and cruelly athirst.

While she was away, Beth had made many good resolutions about behaving herself on her return. Aunt Victoria had talked to her seriously on the subject. Beth could be good enough when she liked: she did all that her aunt expected of her; why could she not do all that her mother expected? Beth promised she would; and was beginning already to keep her promise faithfully by being as troublesome as possible, which was all that her mother ever expected of her. Whether or not thoughts are things which have power to produce effects, there are certainly people who answer to expectation with fatal facility, and Beth was one of them. Eventually she resisted with all her own individuality, but at this time she acted like an instrument played upon by other people's minds. This peculiar sensitiveness she turned to account in after life, using it as a key to character; she had merely to make herself passive, when she found herself reflecting the people with whom she conversed involuntarily; and not as they appeared on the surface, but as they actually were in their inmost selves. In her childhood she unconsciously illustrated the thoughts people had in their minds about her. Aunt Victoria believed in her and trusted her, and when they were alone together, Beth responded to her good opinion; Mrs. Caldwell expected her to be nothing but a worry, and was not disappointed. When Beth was in the same house with both aunt and mother, she varied, answering to the expectation that happened to be strongest at the moment. That afternoon Aunt Victoria was tired after her journey, and did not think of Beth at all; but Mrs. Caldwell was busy in her own mind anticipating all the trouble she would have now Beth was back; and Beth, standing on the box under the attic skylight, with her head out, straining her eyes to seaward, was seized with a sudden impulse which answered to her mother's expectation. That first day she ought to have stayed in, unpacked her box, exhibited her beautiful needlework, got ready for dinner in good time, and proved her affection for her mother and sister by making herself agreeable to them; but instead of that, she stole downstairs, slipped out by the back-gate, and did not return until long after dinner was over.

She did not enjoy the scamper, however. Her home-sickness was gone, but her depression returned nevertheless, as the day declined, only in another form. She had still that curious sensation of being the only living thing in a world of figures moved by mechanism. She stood at the top of the steps which led down on to the pier, where the sailors loitered at idle times, and was greeted by those she knew with slow smiles of recognition; but she had nothing to say to any of them.

The tide was going out, and had left some of the ships in the harbour all canted to one side; cobles and pleasure-boats rested in the mud; a cockle-gatherer was wading about in it with his trousers turned up over his knees, and his bare legs so thickly coated, it looked as if he had black leggings on. Beth went to the edge of the pier, and stood for a few minutes looking down at him. She was facing west, but the sun was already too low to hurt her eyes. On her right the red-roofed houses crowded down to the quay irregularly. Fishing-nets were hanging out of some of the windows. Here and there, down in the harbour, the rich brown sails had been hoisted on some of the cobles to dry. There were some yachts at anchor, and Beth looked at them eagerly, hoping to find Count Bartahlinsky's Seagull amongst them. It was not there; but presently she became conscious of some one standing beside her, and on looking up she recognised Black Gard, the Count's confidential man. He was dressed like the fishermen in drab trousers and a dark blue jersey, but wore a blue cloth cap, with the name of the yacht on it, instead of a sou'wester.

"Has your master returned?" she said.

"No, miss," he answered. "He's still abroad. He'll be back for the hunting, though."

"I doubt it," said Beth, resentful of that vague "abroad," which absorbed him into itself the greater part of the year. When she had spoken, she turned her back on Gard and the sunset, and wandered off up the cliffs. She had noticed a sickly smell coming up from the mud in the harbour, and wanted to escape from it, but somehow it seemed to accompany her. It reminded her of something--no, that was not it. What she was searching about in her mind for was some way, not to name it, but to express it. She felt there was a formula for it within reach, but for some time she could not recover it. Then she gave up the attempt, and immediately afterwards she suddenly said to herself--

"... the smell of death Came reeking from those spicy bowers, And man, the sacrifice of man, Mingled his taint with every breath Upwafted from the innocent flowers."

She did not search for any occult meaning in the lines, nor did they convey anything special to her; but they remained with her for the rest of the day, haunting her, in among her other thoughts, and forcing themselves upon her attention with the irritating persistency of a catchy tune.

On the cliffs she paused to look about her. It was a desolate scene. The tide was so far out by this time it looked as if there were more sand than sea in the bay. The water was the cloudy grey colour of flint, with white rims where the waves broke on the shore. The sky was low, level, and dark; where it met the water there was a heavy bank of cloud, from which an occasional flash of summer lightning, dimmed by daylight, shot along the horizon. The air was peculiarly clear, so that distant objects seemed nearer than was natural. The sheltering headland on the left, which formed the bay, stood out bright white with a crown of vivid green against the sombre sea and sky; while, on the right, the old grey pier, which shut in the view in that direction, and the red-roofed houses of the town crowding down to it, showed details of design and masonry not generally visible to the naked eye from where Beth stood. There were neither ships nor boats in the bay; but a few cobles, with their red-brown sails flapping limp against their masts, rocked lazily at the harbour-mouth waiting for the tide to rise and float them in. Beth heard the men on them shouting an occasional remark to one another, and now and then one of them would sing an uncouth snatch of song, but the effort was spiritless, and did not last.

Leaving the harbour behind, Beth walked on towards the headland. Presently she noticed in front of her the dignified and pathetic figure of an old man, a Roman Catholic priest, Canon Hunter, who, sacrificing all worldly ease or chance of advancement, had come to minister to the neglected fisherfolk on the coast, most of whom were Roman Catholics. He led the life of a saint amongst them, living in dire poverty, his congregation being all of the poorest, with the exception of one lady in the neighbourhood, married to a man whose vices were too expensive to leave him much to spare for his wife's charities. She managed, however, to raise enough money for the rent of the top room in the public hall, which they used as a chapel, and so kept the flickering flame of the old religion alight in the place; but it was a severe struggle. It was whispered, indeed, that more of the gentry in the neighbourhood sympathised with the Catholics than was supposed, and would have helped them but for the discredit--did help them, in fact, when they dared; but no one outside the communion knew how true this report might be, and the fisherfolk loyally held their peace.

It was natural that Beth as she grew up should be attracted by the mystery that surrounded the Roman Catholics, and anxious to comprehend the horror that Protestants had of them. She knew more of them herself than any of the people whom she heard pass uncharitable strictures upon them, and knew nothing for which they could justly be blamed. For the old priest himself she had a great reverence. She had never spoken to him, but had always felt strongly drawn towards him; and now, when she overtook him, her impulse was to slip her hand into his, less on her own account, however, than to show sympathy with him, he seemed so solitary and so suffering, with his slow step and bent back; and so good, with his beautiful calm face.

As she approached, lost in her own thoughts, she gazed up at him intently.

"What is it, my child?" he asked, with a kindly smile. "Can I do anything for you?"

"I was thinking of the beauty of holiness," Beth answered, and passed on.

The old man looked after her, too surprised for the moment to speak, and by the time he had recovered himself, she had turned a corner and was out of sight.

After Beth went home that evening, and had been duly reproached by her mother for her selfish conduct, she stole upstairs to Aunt Victoria's room, and found the old lady sitting with her big Bible on her knee, looking very sad and serious.

"Beth," she said severely, "have you had any food? It is long past your dinner-time, and it does not do for young girls to fast too long."

"I'll go and get something to eat, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered meekly, overcome by her kindness. "I forgot."

She went down to the pantry, and found some cold pie, which she took into the kitchen and ate without appetite.

The heat was oppressive. All the doors and windows stood wide open, but there was no air, and wherever Beth went she was haunted by the sickly smell which she had first perceived coming up from the mud in the harbour, and by the lines which seemed somehow to account for it:--

"... the smell of death Came reeking from those spicy bowers, And man, the sacrifice of man, Mingled his taint with every breath Upwafted from the innocent flowers."

When she had eaten all she could, she went back to Aunt Victoria.

"Shall we read the psalms?" she said.

"Yes, dear," the old lady answered. "I have been waiting for you a long time, Beth."

"Aunt Victoria, I am very sorry," Beth protested. "I didn't think."

"Ah, Beth," the old lady said sorrowfully, "how often is that to be your excuse? You are always thinking, but it is only your own wild fancies that occupy you. When will you learn to think of others?"

"I try always," Beth answered sincerely; "but what am I to do when 'wild fancies' come crowding in spite of me, and all I ought to remember slips away?"

"Pray," Aunt Victoria answered austerely. "Prayer shapes a life; and those lives are the most beautiful which have been shaped by prayer. Prayer is creative; it transposes intention into action, and makes it inevitable for us to be and to do more than would be possible by any other means."

There was a short silence, and then Miss Victoria began the psalm. It was a joy to Beth to hear her read, she read so beautifully; and it was from her that Beth herself acquired the accomplishment, for which she was afterwards noted. Verse by verse they read the psalms together as a rule, and Beth was usually attentive; but that evening, before the end, her attention became distracted by a loud ticking; and the last word was scarcely pronounced before she exclaimed, looking about her--"Aunt Victoria, what is that ticking? I see no clock."

The old lady looked up calmly, but she was very pale. "You do hear it then?" she replied. "It has been going on all day."

Beth's heart stood still an instant, and, in spite of the heat, her skin crisped as if the surface of her body had been suddenly sprayed with cold water. "The Death Watch!" she ejaculated.

The ticking stopped a moment as if in answer to the words, and then began again. A horrible foreboding seized upon Beth.

"Oh, no--no, not that!" she exclaimed, shuddering; and then, all at once, she threw herself upon her knees beside Aunt Victoria, clasped her arms round her, and burst into a tempest of tears and sobs.

"Beth, Beth, my dear child," the old lady cried in dismay, "control yourself. It is only a little insect in the wood. It may mean nothing."

"It does mean something," Beth interrupted vehemently; "I know--I always know. The smell of death has been about me all the afternoon, but I did not understand, although the words were in my mouth. When things mean nothing, they don't make you feel queer--they don't impress you. Nine times running you may see a solitary crow, or spill the salt, or sit down thirteen to table, and laugh at all superstitious nonsense; then the sign was not for you; but the tenth time, something will come over you, and you won't laugh; then be warned and beware! I sometimes feel as if I were listening, but not with my ears, and waiting for things to happen that I know about, but not with my head; and I try always to understand when I find myself listening, but not with my ears, and something surely comes; and so also when I am waiting for things to happen that I know about, but not with my head; they do happen. Only most of the time I know that something is coming, but I cannot tell what it is. In order to be able to tell exactly, I have to hold myself in a certain attitude--not my body, you know, myself--hold myself in suspense, as it were, or suspend something in myself, stop something, push something aside--I can't get it into words; I can't always do it; but when I can, then I know."

"Who taught you this?" Aunt Victoria asked, as if she were startled.

"Oh, no one taught me," Beth answered. "I just found myself doing it. Then I tried to notice how it was done. I wanted to be able to do it myself when I liked. And it was just as if there were two doors, and one had to be shut before I could look out of the other--the one that is my nose and eyes and ears; when that is shut, then I know; I look out of the other. Do things come to you so, Aunt Victoria?"

The old lady had taken Beth's hand, and was stroking it and looking at her very seriously. "No," she said, shaking her head, "no, things do not come to me like that. But although I have only one set of faculties myself, my outlook is not so limited by them that I cannot comprehend the possibility of something beyond. There are written records of people in olden times who must have possessed some such power--some further faculty such as you describe. It may be that it lies latent in the whole race, awaiting favourable conditions to develop itself, and some few rare beings have come into possession of it already. We are complex creatures--body, soul, and spirit, says the saint; and there is spiritual power. Beth, lay hold of that which you perceive in yourself, cherish it, cultivate it, live the life necessary to develop it; for be sure it is a great gift--it may be a divine one."

When the old lady stopped, Beth raised her head and looked about her, as if she had just awakened from sleep. "What were we talking about before that?" she said. "Oh, I know--the Death Watch. It has stopped."

The equinoctial gales set in early that year, and severely. Great seas washed away the silver sands which had been the delight of the summer visitors, leaving miles of clay exposed at low water to add to the desolation of the scene. The bay was full of storm-stayed vessels, all headed to the wind, close reefed, and straining at their anchors. There were days when the steamers had to steam full speed ahead in order to keep at their berths; and then the big sailing ships would drag their anchors and come drifting, drifting helplessly towards the shore, and have to fly before the gale if they could, or take their chance of stranding if the water were low, or being battered to bits against the cliffs if the tide were in. Many a time Beth stood among the fishermen watching, waiting, praying; her whole being centred on some hapless crew, making for the harbour, but almost certain to be carried past. There was a chain down the middle of the pier in the winter to prevent people from being washed off, and she had stood clinging to this, and seen a great ship, with one ragged sail fluttering from a broken mast, carried before the wind right on to the pier-head, which it struck with a crash that displaced great blocks of granite as if they had been sponge-cakes; and when it struck, the doomed sailors on its decks sent up an awful shriek, to which those on the pier responded. Then there was a pause. Beth held her breath and heard nothing; but she saw the ship slip back, back--down amongst the mountainous waves, which sported with it once or twice, tossed it up, and sucked it down, tossed it again, then suddenly engulfed it. On the water afterwards there were ropes and spars, and dark things bobbing like corks, but she knew they were men in mortal agony; and she found herself shouting encouragement, telling them to hold on bravely, help was coming--the lifeboat! the lifeboat! She joined in the sob of excitement too, and the cheers of relief when it returned with its crew complete, and five poor wretches rescued--only five out of fifteen, but still----

"Blessed be God," said the old priest, "for those whom He has received into glory; and blessed be His holy name for those whom He deigns to let live."

Beth, standing beside him, heard the words, and wonderingly contrasted him with Parson Richardson, who remained shut up with his fourth wife in his fat living, making cent. per cent. out of his school, and heedless of the parish, while one so old and feeble as Canon Hunter stood by his people at all times, careless of himself, enduring hardship, braving danger, a man among men in spite of age and weakness, by reason of great love.

The pinch of poverty was severely felt again that winter in the Caldwell household. Beth, who was growing rapidly, became torpid from excessive self-denial; she tried to do without enough, to make it as if there were one mouth less to feed, and the privation told upon her; her energy flagged; when she went out, she found it difficult to drag herself home, and the exuberant spirit of daring, which found expression in naughty enterprises, suddenly subsided. She poached on principle still for the benefit of the family; but the cool confidence born of a sort of inward certainty, which is a premonition of success, if it is not the power that compels it, was wanting; and it was as if her own doubts when she set the snares released the creatures from the fascination that should have lured them, so that she caught but little. The weather, too, was very severe; every one in the house, including Beth, was more or less ill from colds and coughs, and Aunt Victoria suffered especially; but none of them complained, not even to themselves; they just endured. They felt for each other, however.

"Mamma, don't you think Aunt Victoria should have a fire in her room?" Beth said one day.

"I do, my dear child," Mrs. Caldwell answered tartly; "but I can't afford the fuel, and she can't afford it either."

"I wish I had known that," said Beth. "I wouldn't have let her afford to take me away in the summer, spending all her money for nothing."

"What a grateful and gracious child you are!" her mother exclaimed.

Beth went frowning from the room.

The snow was several feet deep on the ground already, and was still falling heavily. Beth put on her things and stole out, her idea being to gather sticks to make a fire for the old lady; but after a weary trudge she was obliged to return empty-handed, wet, weary, and disheartened. The sticks were deep down under the snow; there were none to be seen.

"O God!" Beth prayed as she stumbled home, raising her pinched face to the sombre sky, "O God, save Aunt Victoria all suffering. Don't let her feel the cold, dear Lord, don't let her feel it."

Aunt Victoria herself was stoical. She came down to breakfast every morning, and sat up stiffly at the end of the table away from the fire, her usual seat, eating little, and saying little, but listening with interest when the others spoke. Beth watched her, waited on her, and lay awake at night fretting because there was nothing more to be done for her.

One stormy night in particular, Beth could not sleep. There was a great gale blowing. It came in terrific gusts that shook the house, rattled the windows, and made the woodwork creak; then died away, and was followed by an interval of comparative quiet, broken by strange, mysterious sounds, to which Beth listened with strained attention, unable to account for them. One moment it was as if trailing garments swept down the narrow stairs, heavy woollen garments that made a soft sort of muffled sound, but there was no footfall, as of some one walking. Then there came stifled voices, whisperings, as of people talking eagerly yet cautiously. Then there were heavy steps, distinct yet slow, followed, after an interval, by the tramp of shuffling feet, like those of people carrying an awkward burden, and stumbling under it. But always, before Beth could think what the noise meant, the gust came again, racking her nerves, rattling the windows, making the doors creak; then dying away, to be followed by more mysterious sounds, but of another character.

"If only there were time--if only they would last long enough, I should know--I should understand," Beth thought, full of foreboding. She was not frightened, only greatly excited. Something was coming, something was going to happen, and these were the warnings, of that she was certain. It was as if she were sensitive to some atmosphere that surrounds an event and becomes perceptible to those whom it concerns if they are of the right temperament to receive the impression.

When the blast struck the house, blotting out the strange sounds which puzzled Beth, it released her strained attention, and had the effect of silence upon her after noise. In one of these pauses, she wondered if her mother and Bernadine, in the next bed, were asleep.

"Mamma," she said softly, "mamma!" There was no response. The gale dropped. Then Beth heard some one coughing hard.

"Mamma," she said again, "mamma!"

"What's the matter?" Mrs. Caldwell answered, awaking with a start.

"Aunt Victoria is coughing."

"Well, my dear child, I'm very sorry, but I can't help it; and it is hardly enough to wake me for," Mrs. Caldwell answered. She settled herself to sleep again, and the gale raged without; but Beth remained, resting on her elbow, not listening so much as straining her attention out into the darkness in an effort to perceive with her further faculty what was beyond the range of her limited senses.

"Mamma!" she exclaimed once more, "Aunt Victoria is moaning."

"Nonsense, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You couldn't possibly hear her if she were."

There was another little interval, then Beth jumped out of bed, crying as she did so, "Mamma, Aunt Victoria is calling me."

"Beth," Mrs. Caldwell said, rousing herself, and speaking sternly, "get into bed again directly, and lie down and go to sleep. It is the gale that is making you so nervous. Put the bed-clothes over your head, and then you won't hear it."

Beth had been huddling on the first thing she laid hold of in the dark, a thick woollen dressing-gown of her mother's, while she was speaking. "I shall go and see for myself," she replied.

"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Caldwell. "It wouldn't be you if you didn't upset the whole house for your fancies. When you have awakened your aunt, and spoilt her night for nothing, as you have spoilt mine, you'll be satisfied."

Beth opened the door, and stepped down into darkness, unrelieved by the slightest glimmer of light. She had to descend some steps and go up some others to get to Aunt Victoria's room; and, after the first step, she felt as if she were floating in some new element, not moving of her own accord, but borne along confidently, without seeing and without feeling her way; and, as she went, she found that the long thick garment she wore was making the same soft muffled sound she had already heard, and also that there was no footstep audible.

She went into Aunt Victoria's room without knocking. It struck Beth as being intensely cold. A candle was burning on the little table beside the bed. The old lady was sitting, propped up uncomfortably with two thin pillows and a hassock. She was breathing with difficulty, and showed no surprise when she saw Beth enter. Her lips were moving, and Beth could see she was mumbling something, but she could distinguish no word until she went quite close, when she heard her say, "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people," several times.

"Aunt Victoria, are you ill?" Beth said. The old lady looked at her with dim eyes, then stretched out her hand to her. Beth clasped it. It was deadly cold.

"I shall light the fire," Beth said with determination, "and I shall make you some tea to ease your cough. You won't mind if I take the candle a moment to go downstairs and get the things?"

Beth was practical enough now. The vision and the dream had passed, and she was wide awake again, using her eyes, and requiring a candle. Before she went downstairs she fetched extra pillows from the spare room, and propped Aunt Victoria up more comfortably. Then she set to work to light the fire, and soon had the kettle boiling. As the room began to warm, Aunt Victoria revived a little, and smiled on Beth for the first time with perfect recognition. Beth had made her some tea, and was giving it to her in spoonfuls.

"Is that nice?" she said.

"Delicious," the old lady answered.

The gale was all on the other side of the house, so that here in front it was comparatively quiet; besides, the wind was dying away as the day approached. Beth put the teacup down when Aunt Victoria had taken the little she could, and sat on the side of the bed, holding the old lady's hand, and gazing at her intently; and, as she watched, she saw a strange change come over her. The darkness was fading from the sky and the light from Aunt Victoria's face. Beth had seen nothing like this before, and yet she had no doubt of what was coming. She had known it for days and days; she seemed to have known it always.

"Shall I go for mamma?" she asked at last.

The old lady shook her head.

Beth felt strangely benumbed. She thought of rousing Harriet to fetch the doctor, but she could not move. All feeling was suspended except the sensation of waiting. This lasted awhile, then a lump began to mount in her throat, and she had to gulp it down several times.

"Poor little girl," Aunt Victoria muttered, looking at her in her kindly way. Beth melted. "Oh, what shall I do?" she whimpered, "you have been so very good to me. You've taught me all the good I know, and I have done nothing for you--nothing but bother you. But I love you, Aunt Victoria; stay, do stay. I want to do everything you would like."

The old lady faintly pressed her hand, then made a last great effort to speak. "Bless you, Beth, my dear child," she managed to say with great difficulty. "Be comforted; you have helped me more than you know. In my sore need, I was not left comfortless. Neither will you be. May the Lord bless you, and keep you always. Amen."

Her head sank upon her breast. She seemed to settle down in the bed as if her weight had suddenly grown greater.

The sombre dawn had broken by this time, and by its light Beth saw the shadow of death come creeping over the delicate patient face.

"Aunt Victoria," she gasped breathlessly, like one in haste to deliver a message before it is too late, "shall I say 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates?' That was the first thing you taught me."

The old lady spoke no more, but Beth saw that she understood. The faint flicker of a smile, a pleased expression, came into her face and settled there. Beth, feeling the full solemnity of the moment, got down from the bed, and stood beside it, holding fast still to the kind old hand that would nevermore caress or help her, as if she could keep the dear one near her by clinging to her.

"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place?" she began, with a strange vibration in her voice. "He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity; nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in." Beth's voice broke here, but with a great effort she began again fervently: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors----"

There she stopped, for at the words the dear good kind old lady, with a gentle sigh, as of relief, passed from the scene of her sufferings, out of this interval of time, into the measureless eternity.

Chapter XXIV

Aunt Victoria Bench died of failure of the heart, the medical man decided; and, he might have added, if the feelings of the family had not had to be considered, that the disease was accelerated by privation and cold.

For days after the event, Beth was not to be roused. She would sit in the tenantless room by the hour together, with the dear old aunt's great Bible on her knee open at some favourite passage, thinking of all that ought to have been done to save her, and suffering the ache and rage of the helpless who would certainly have done all that could have been done had they had their way. Again and again her mother fetched her down to the dining-room where there was a fire, and tried to reason with her, or scolded her for her persistent grief when reasoning produced no effect.

"You must begin your lessons again, Beth," she said to her at last one morning in despair. "Giving you a holiday is doing you no good at all."

Beth went upstairs without a word, and brought down the old aunt's French books, and sat at the dining-table with one of them open before her; but the sight of it recalled the happy summer days in the bright little parlour looking out on the trees and flowers, and the dear old lady with her delicate face sitting at the end of the table placidly knitting while Beth prepared her lesson, and the tears welled up in her eyes once more, and fell on the yellow pages.

"Beth," said her mother emphatically, "you must not go on like this. Why are you so selfish? Don't I feel it too? Yet I control myself."

"You don't feel it as I do," Beth answered doggedly. "She was not so much to you when she was here, how can you miss her so much now she has gone?"

"But you have others to love," Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated. "She was not your nearest relation."

"No, but she was the dearest," Beth replied. "I may have others to love, but she was the one who loved me. She never said I had no affection for any one; she never said I was selfish and thought of nothing but my own interests. If she had to find fault with me, she did it so that she made me want to be better. She was never unkind, she was never unjust, and now I've lost her, I have no one."

"It is your own fault then," said Mrs. Caldwell, apt as usual to say the kind of thing with which fatuous parents torment the genius-child. "You are so determined not to be like other people that nobody can stand you."

"I am not determined to be unlike other people," Beth exclaimed, turning crimson with rage and pain. "I want to be like everybody else, and I am like everybody else. And I am always ready to care for people too, if they will let me. It isn't my fault if they don't like me."

"It is your fault," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James. He can hardly tolerate you."

"He's a fool, so that doesn't matter," said Beth, who always dealt summarily with Uncle James. "I can't tolerate him. But you can't say I separate myself from Aunt Grace Mary. She likes me, and she's kind; but she's silly, and when I'm with her any time it makes me yawn. Is that my fault? And did I separate myself from Kitty? Did I separate myself from papa? Do I separate myself from Count Bartahlinsky? Have I separated myself from Aunt Victoria?--and who else is there?"

"You gave Aunt Victoria plenty of trouble while she was here," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined drily.

"Well, that is true, at all events," Beth answered in a broken voice; and then she bowed her head on the old French grammar, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Mrs. Caldwell looked up from her work at her from time to time frowning, but she was too much ruffled by some of Beth's remarks to say anything consoling; and Beth, absorbed in her grief, lost all consciousness of everything outside herself.

At last, however, a kindly hand was laid on her head, and some one stroked her hair.

"That is the way she goes on, and I don't know what to do with her," Mrs. Caldwell was saying. "Come, Beth, rouse yourself," she added sharply.

Beth looked up, and found that it was Aunt Grace Mary who was stroking her hair.

"Poor little body!" said Aunt Grace Mary as if she were speaking to an infant, then added in a sprightly tone: "Come, dear! Come, dear! Wipe your eyes. Mamma will be here directly--my mamma--and Uncle James, and Mr. Watson."

"What are they coming for?" said Beth.

"Oh, your mamma knows," Aunt Grace Mary answered archly. "Mr. Watson was poor dear Aunt Victoria's lawyer, and he has brought her will, and is going to read it to us."

"Am I to be sent out of the room?" Beth asked.

"Of course," said Mrs. Caldwell. "It isn't a matter for you at all."

"Everything is a matter for me that concerned Aunt Victoria," Beth rejoined, "and if Lady Benyon is to be here, I shall stay."

Before Mrs. Caldwell could reply, Lady Benyon herself was ushered into the little room with great deference by Uncle James. They were followed by a little old gentleman dressed in black, with spectacles, and a pair of badly-fitting black kid gloves. He shook hands with Mrs. Caldwell, and then with Beth, whom he looked at over his spectacles shrewdly. Uncle James also shook hands, and kissed his sister. "This is a solemn occasion," he said, with emotion in his voice. Then he looked at Beth, and added, "Had she not better go?"

Beth sat down beside Aunt Grace Mary, with her mouth obstinately set; and Mrs. Caldwell, afraid of a scene, merely shrugged her shoulders helplessly. Meanwhile the lawyer was blowing his nose, wiping his spectacles, taking papers out of a pocket at the back of his frock-coat, and settling himself at the table.

"You would like this young lady to retire, I suppose," said Uncle James blandly.

"By no means," the little old gentleman answered, looking up at him over his spectacles, and then at Beth. "By no means; let the young lady remain."

Aunt Grace Mary put her arm round Beth. The lawyer broke the seal, unfolded the will, and remarked by way of preface: "The document is in the handwriting of the deceased. Ahem!"

Instantly into every face there came the expression that people wear in church. Mr. Watson proceeded to read; but in a dry, distinct, matter-of-fact tone, devoid of all emotion. A lawyer reading a will aloud is sure of the interest of his audience, and, on this occasion, it was evident that each member of the little group listened with strained attention, but with very different feelings. What they gathered was that Miss Victoria Bench, spinster, being of sound mind, did will and bequeath everything of which she might die possessed to her beloved great-niece, Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth. Should Beth marry, the money was to be settled upon her for her exclusive use. The present income from the property, about fifty pounds a year, was to be devoted to the education of the said Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth.

Uncle James's jaw dropped during the reading. "But," he stammered when it was over, "if the investments recover?"

"Then Miss Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth, will have an income of between six and seven hundred a year, at least," said the lawyer, smiling.

Aunt Grace Mary clasped Beth close in a spasm of congratulation. Mrs. Caldwell burst into tears. Beth herself, with an unmoved countenance, perceived the disgust of Uncle James, her mother's emotion, and something like amusement in Lady Benyon's face; and she also perceived, but at a great distance as it were, that there was a dim prospect of some change for the better in her life.

"Poor little body!" said Aunt Grace Mary, caressing her.

"Rich little body!" said Lady Benyon. "Come and kiss me, Puck, and let me congratulate you."

"It is very nice for you, Beth, I am sure," said Mrs. Caldwell plaintively, holding out her hand to Beth as she passed. Beth accepted this also as a congratulation, and stooped and kissed her mother. Then the lawyer got up and shook hands with her, and thereupon Uncle James, feeling forced for decency's sake to do something, observed pointedly: "I suppose Miss Victoria Bench was quite sane when she made this bequest?"

"I should say that your supposition was correct," said the lawyer. "Miss Victoria Bench always seemed to me to be an eminently sane person."

There was no allusion whatever to Uncle James in Aunt Victoria's will. She thanked her niece, Caroline Caldwell, kindly for the shelter she had given her in her misfortune, and hoped that by providing for Beth she would relieve her mother's mind of all anxiety about the child, to whom, she proceeded to state, she left all she had in proof of the tender affection she felt for the child, and in return for the disinterested love and duty she had received from Beth. Aunt Victoria wished Beth to have her room when she was gone, in order that Beth might, as she grew up, have proper privacy in her life, with undisturbed leisure for study, reflection, and prayer. She added that she considered Beth a child of exceptional temperament, that peculiar care and kindness would be necessary to develop her character; but Miss Victoria hoped, prayed, and believed that, with the help of the excellent abilities with which she had been endowed, Beth would not only work out her own salvation eventually, but do something notable to the glory of God and for the good of mankind.

Beth's heart glowed when she heard this passage, and ever afterwards, when she recalled it, she felt strangely stimulated.

After the last solemn words of the will had been read, and the little scene of congratulation had been enacted, there was a pause in the proceedings, then Uncle James remarked in his happiest manner: "The importance which old ladies attach to their little bequests is only to be equalled by the strength of their sentiments, and the grandeur of the language in which they are expressed. One would think a principality was being bequeathed to a princess, instead of a few pounds to an obscure little girl, to judge by the tone of the whole document. Well, well!"

Beth looked at him, then drew down the corners of her mouth impertinently. "There is one thing I can console you with, Uncle James," she said. "You may be quite sure that when I do come into my kingdom, I shall carefully conceal the fact that I am any relation of yours."

Later in the day, Beth found her mother sitting in her accustomed place by the dining-table, rocking herself sideways over her work, and with a worried expression of countenance, as if she were uneasy in her mind.

"Aren't you pleased, mamma," said Beth, "that I should be left the money?"

"Why, yes, of course, my dear child," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. Her tone to Beth had altered very much since the morning. Even in a few short hours Beth had been made to feel that mere money was making her a person of more importance than she had ever before been considered.

Her mother had stopped short, but Beth waited, and Mrs. Caldwell recommenced: "I am delighted on your account. Only, I was just thinking. The money is of no use to you just now, and it would have made all the difference to Jim. He ought to be making friends now who will last him his life and help him on in his career; but he can do nothing without an allowance, and I cannot make him one. There is no hurry for your education. In fact, I think it would be better for your health if you were not taught too much at present. But you shall have your aunt's room, Beth, to study in if you like. You may even sleep there, although I shall feel it when you leave mine. It will be breaking up the family. That remark in the will about proper privacy seems to me great nonsense, and you know I am not legally bound to give you a room to yourself. However, it was the dear old lady's last request to me, and that makes it sacred, so it shall be carried out to the letter. The room is yours, and I hope you will enjoy your privacy."

"Oh, I shall," Beth exclaimed with uncomplimentary fervour.

Mrs. Caldwell sighed and sewed on in silence for a little.

"The dear old lady left you the money because she believed you would do some good with it," she resumed. "'For the good of mankind.' Those are her own words. And I do think that is rather your line, Beth; and what greater good can you do to begin with than help your brother on in the world? To spend the money on him instead of on yourself would really be a fine, unselfish thing to do."

Beth's great grey eyes dilated; the prospect was alluring. "I suppose there would not be enough for both of us?" she ventured tentatively--"enough for me to be taught some few things properly, you know--English, music, French."

"On fifty pounds a year, my dear child!" her mother exclaimed sorrowfully. "Fifty pounds goes no way at all." Beth sighed. "Besides," Mrs. Caldwell pursued, "I can teach you all these things. You've got beyond your childish tiresomeness now, and have only to ask, and then I will tell you all you don't know. It would be a pleasure and an occupation for me, and indeed, Beth, I have very little pleasure in life. The days are long and lonely." Beth looked up with sudden sympathy. "But if you will let me give you the lessons, and earn the money, I could send it to Jim, and that would comfort me greatly, and add also to your happiness, I should think."

It was not in Beth to resist such an appeal. She always forgot herself at the first symptom of sorrow or suffering in another, and never considered her own interests if she could help somebody else by sacrificing them.

"It would add to my happiness," she answered brightly. "And if you will just explain to me, mamma, when I don't understand things, I shall remember all right, and not be a bother to you. Will you be kind to me, and not scold me, and jeer at me, and make my life a burden to me? When you do that, I hate you."

Mrs. Caldwell stopped short with her needle up in the air, in the act of drawing the thread through her work. She was inexpressibly shocked.

"Hate your mother, Beth!" she gasped.

"I know it's abominable," said Beth, filled with compunction; "but I can't help it. It's the devil, I suppose. He gets hold of us both, and makes you torment me, and makes me--not like you for it."

Mrs. Caldwell quietly resumed her sewing. She was too much startled by this glimpse of herself from Beth's point of view to say another word on the subject; and a long silence ensued, during which she saw herself as a sadly misunderstood mother. She determined, however, to try and manage Beth on a new principle.

"I should like to help you to make the best of yourself, Beth," she burst out again abruptly; "and I think I can. You are a tall girl for your age, and are beginning to hold yourself well already. Your poor dear aunt was very particular to teach you that. And you have the complexion of the Bench family, if you will take care of it. You should wash your face in buttermilk at night after being out in the sun. I'll get you some, and I'll get you a parasol for the summer. Your hands are not nearly so coarse as they used to be, and they would really be quite nice if you attended to them properly. All your father's people had good hands and feet. I must see to your gloves and boots. I don't know what your waist is going to be, but you shall have some good stays. A fine shape goes a long way. With your prospects you really ought to make a good match, so do not slouch about any more as if you had no self-respect at all. You can really do a great deal to make yourself attractive in appearance. Your Uncle William Caldwell had a very ugly nose, but he pinched it, and pinched it every day to get it into shape, until at last he made it quite a good one."

Bernadine came into the room in time to hear this story, and was so impressed by it that she tried the same experiment on her own nose without asking if it were ugly or not, and pinched it and rubbed it so diligently that by the time it was formed she had thickened it and changed it from a good ordinary nose into something quite original.

This was the kind of thing that happened to ladies in the days when true womanliness consisted in knowing nothing accurately, and always taking advice. Efforts to improve themselves in some such way were common enough among marriageable maidens, and their mothers helped them to the best of their ability with equally happy hints. Because small feet were a beauty, therefore feet already in perfect proportion must be squeezed to reduce their size till they were all deformed; and because slenderness was considered elegant, therefore naturally well-formed women must compress their bodies till they looked like cylinders or hour-glasses, and lace till their noses swelled and their hair fell out. Never having heard of proportion, all their ambition was to reduce themselves to something less than they were designed to be. Those were the days when women had "no nonsense about them, sir, I tell you," none of those new-fangled ideas about education and that.

It was a new notion to Beth that she could do anything to make herself attractive, and she took a solemn interest in it. She listened with absolute faith to all that her mother said on the subject, and determined to be high-principled and make the most of herself. When her mother talked to her in this genial friendly way, instead of carping at her or ignoring her, Beth's heart expanded and she was ready to do anything to please her. Lessons on the new method went on without friction. Beth never suspected that her mother was unequal to the task of educating her in any true sense of the word; her mother never suspected it, neither did anybody else; and Beth had it all her own way. If she were idle, her mother excused her; if she brought a lesson only half-learnt, her mother prompted her all through; if she asked questions, her mother answered them pleasantly; so that they got on very well together, and everybody was satisfied--especially Jim, who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances.

Chapter XXV

When she did what Aunt Victoria approved, Beth felt that she was making Aunt Victoria happy. Her dead were never far from her, never beyond recall. She conquered her pride for Aunt Victoria's sake, and began to go out again with her mother for the morning walk that winter unasked; but Mrs. Caldwell seemed indifferent to the attention. She let Beth walk beside her day after day, but remained absorbed in her own reflections, and made no effort to talk to Beth and take her out of herself; so that Beth very soon found the duty intolerably irksome. It irritated her, too, when she caught her mother smiling to herself, and on asking what was amusing her, Mrs. Caldwell replied, still smiling, "Never you mind." With Beth's temperament it was not possible that the sense of duty would long survive such snubs. Gradually she began to wander off by herself again, leaving her mother pacing up and down the particular sheltered terrace overlooking the sea on which she always walked at that hour, and Bernadine playing about the cliffs or the desolate shore.

The whole place was desolate and melancholy at that time of the year. The wind-swept streets were generally deserted, and the few people who ventured out looked cold and miserable in their winter wraps. When a gleam of sunshine enlivened the sky, the sailors would stand at the top of the steps that led down on to the pier, with their hands in their trousers-pockets, chewing tobacco, and straining their eyes out seaward as if they were watching for something special; and Beth would stand there among them, and look out too--out, far beyond the range of their mental vision, eastwards, to summer lands whence the swallows came, where the soft air was perfumed with flowers, and there was brightness and warmth and ease, and the sea itself, so full of complaint down below there, raged no more, neither lamented, but sang. And there Aunt Victoria would be, sitting somewhere out of doors under the trees, with good things, books and work and fruit and flowers, piled up on a little table beside her, and every wish of her heart gratified, looking serenely happy, and smiling and nodding and beckoning to Beth. But following fast upon the vision, Aunt Victoria would be beside her in the bitter wind, wearing her old brown dress with white spots that was far too thin, and making believe that she did not shiver; then they had returned from the morning walk, and Aunt Victoria was pausing a moment at the bottom of the stairs to look up, as if measuring her strength and the distance, before she took hold of the bannister and began to mount wearily, but never once trusting herself to glance towards Bernadine and the bread, lest something should be seen in her face which she chose to conceal. From that vision Beth would fly down the steps to the sands, and escape it in a healthy race with the turgid waves that came cresting in and broke on the barren shore.

Then one day, suddenly, as it seemed, a bird sang. The winter was over, spring was upon the land again, and Beth looked up and smiled. The old pear-tree in the little garden at the back was a white wonder of blossom, and, in front, in the orchard opposite, the apple-trees blushed with a tinge of pink. Beth, seeing them one morning very early from her bed in Aunt Victoria's room, arose at once, rejoicing, and threw the window wide open. Beth might have used the same word to express the good and the beautiful, as the Greeks did, so inseparably were the two associated in her mind. At this stage of her development she felt very literally--

"The heavens are telling the glory of God, The wonder of His works displays the firmament."

"O Lord, how wondrous are Thy works," she chanted to herself softly, as she gazed, awe-stricken, at the loveliness of the rose-tinged foam on the fruit-trees, and her whole being was thrilled with gratitude for the beauty of earth. She took deep draughts of the sweet morning air, and, like the Indian devotee, she breathed a sacred word with every breath. But passive ecstasy was not enough for Beth. Her fine feelings strove for expression always in some fine act, and as she stood at the window she made good resolutions. Her life should be ordered to worthy purposes from morning till night. She would in future begin the day by getting up to greet the dawn in an ecstasy of devotion. Not a minute later than daybreak would do for her. All Beth's efforts aimed at an extreme.

She idled most of that day away in contemplation of her project, and she was as dilatory and troublesome as she could be, doing nothing she ought to have done, because her mind was so full of all the things she was going to do. What she feared was that she would never be able to wake herself in time, and she went to bed at a preposterously early hour, and sat long in her night-dress, thinking how to manage it. At last it occurred to her that if she tied her great toe to the bed-post with a piece of string, it would give her a jerk when she moved, and so awake her.

The contrivance answered only too well. She could not sleep for a long time, and when at last she dropped off, she was almost immediately awakened by a pitiless jerk from the string. She had Aunt Victoria's old watch under her pillow, and lighted a match to see the time. It was only twelve. When would the day break? She turned, and tossed, and fidgeted. The string on her toe was very uncomfortable, but nothing would have induced her to be so weak as to take it off. One, two, three, she heard the church-clock strike, but it was still pitch dark. Then she dozed off again, but in a minute, as it seemed to her, she was re-aroused by the string. She gave a great weary sigh and opened her eyes. It was all grey daylight in the room.

Beth was out of bed as soon as she could get the string off her toe. The water was very cold, and she shivered and yawned and stretched over it, but washed herself with exaggerated conscientiousness all the same, then huddled on her clothes, and stood awhile, not knowing quite what to do next. She had slept with the window open, and now she drew up the blind. Under the leaden sky the apple-trees showed no tinge of colour, and it was as if white sheets had been spread out over them for the night. Beth thought of curl-papers and rooms all covered up from the dust when Harriet was sweeping, and felt no enthusiasm. She was on the west side of the house, and could not therefore see the sun rise; but she must see the sunrise--sunrise--sunrise. She had never seen the sunrise. The sea was east. It would rise over the sea. The sea at sunrise! The very thought of it took her breath away. She put on her things and slipped into the acting-room. Her mother took the front-door key up to her room with her when she went to bed at night, so that the only way out was by the acting-room window. Beth swung herself round the bar, crept cautiously down the tiles to the pump, jumped to the ground, then ran up the entry, and let herself out by the back-gate into the street. There she was seized upon by a great feeling of freedom. She threw up her arms, filled her lungs with a deep breath, and ran. There was not a soul to be seen. The town was hers!

She made for a lonely spot on the cliff, where a stream fell in a cataract on to the sand, and there was a rustic seat with a lovely view of the bay. Beth dropped on to the seat out of breath and looked curiously about her. The tide was high. The water, smooth, sullen, swollen and weary, broke on the shore in waves so small that it seemed as if the sea, tired of its endless task, were doing dispiritedly as little as it dared, and murmuring at that. The curving cliffs on the left looked like white curtains, closely drawn. The low grey sky was unbroken by cloud or rift except low down on the horizon, where it had risen like a blind drawn up a little to admit the light. It was a melancholy prospect, and Beth shivered and sighed in sympathy. Then a sparrow cheeped somewhere behind her, and another bird in the hedge softly fluted a little roulade. Beth looked round to see what it was, and at that moment the light brightened as if it had been suddenly turned up. She looked at the sea again. The rift in the leaden sky had lengthened and widened, and the first pale primrose of the dawn showed beyond. A faint flush followed, and then it seemed as if the night sky slowly rolled itself up and was put away, leaving a floor of silver, deepening to lilac, for the first bright beam to disport itself upon. Then the sea smiled, and the weariness of it, back and forth, back and forth, passed into animation. Its smooth surface became diapered with light airs, and moved with a gentle roll. The sullen murmur rose to a morning song, and a boat with bare mast at anchor in the bay, the only one in sight, rocked to the tune. A great sea-bird sailed by, gazing down into the depths with piercing eyes, and a grey gull flew so close to the water, it seemed as if his wings must dip at every flap. The sky by this time was all a riot of colour, at which Beth gazed in admiration, but without rapture. Her intellect acknowledged its loveliness, but did not delight in it--heart and soul were untouched. The spirit of the dawn refused to speak to her. She had exhausted herself in her effort to induce the intoxication of devotion which had come to her spontaneously the day before. The great spirit does not want martyrs. Joy in beauty and goodness comes of a pure and tranquil mind, not of a tortured body. The faces of the holy ones are calm and their souls serene.

A little farm-house stood back from the road just behind the seat where Beth was sitting, and a tall gaunt elderly man, with a beard on his chin, came out presently and stood staring grimly at the sunrise. Then he crossed the road deliberately, sat down at the other end of the seat, and stared at Beth.

"You're early out," he said at last.

Beth detected something hostile in the tone, and fixed her big fearless grey eyes upon him defiantly. "It's a free country," she said.

"Free or not," he answered drily, "it isn't fit fur no young gell to be out alone at sechun a time. Ye should be indoors gettin' the breakfast."

"Thank you," said Beth, "I've no need to get the breakfast."

"Well, it makes it all the worse," he rejoined; "fur if ye're by way o' bein' a lady, it not on'y means that ye're out wi' no one to tak' care of ye, but that ye've niver been taught to tak' care o' yerself. Lady!" he ejaculated. "Pride and patches! Tak' my advice, lady, go back to yer bed, get yer meed o' sleep, wak' up refreshed, and set to work."

He spat on the grass in a self-satisfied way when he had spoken, and contemplated the sunrise like a man who has done his duty and earned the right to repose.

Beth got up and walked home despondently. She climbed in at the acting-room window, and went to her own room. The sun was shining on the apple-blossom in the orchard opposite, and she looked for the charm of yesterday, but finding only the garish commonplace of fruit-trees in flower with the sun on them, she drew down the blind. Then she took off her hat and jacket, threw herself on her bed, and fell into a heavy sleep, with her brow puckered and the corners of her mouth drooping discontentedly.

The next night she determined to take her meed of sleep, and did not tie the string to her toe. It had been a long lonely day, filled with great dissatisfaction and vague yearnings for companionship; but when she fell asleep she had a happy dream, so vivid that it seemed more real than anything she had seen in her morning ramble. It was eight o'clock in the evening, she dreamt, and there was some one waiting for her under the pear-tree in the garden. The night air was fresh and fragrant. The moonlight shone on the white blossoms overhead, which clustered so close that no ray penetrated to the ground beneath, so that there all was shadowy, but still she could see that there was some one standing in the shade, and she knew that he was waiting for her. She had never seen him before, yet she knew him well and hurried to meet him; and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and his kisses thrilled her with a thrill that remained with her for many a day.

She got up the moment she awoke, and looked about her in a kind of amaze, for everything she saw was transfigured. It was in herself, however, that the light burned which made the world so radiant. As the old apple-trees, warmed by the sun, suddenly blossomed into bridal beauty in the spring, so, in the silent night, between sundown and day-dawn, while she slept, yet another petal of her own manifold nature had unfolded, and in the glow of its loveliness there was nothing of commonplace aspect; for a new joy in life was hers which helped her to discover in all things a hitherto unsuspected charm.

Beth's little life had been full of childish irregularities, the little duties being continually slurred and neglected that the little pleasures might be indulged in the sooner. She was apt to regard bathing, hair-brushing, dressing, and lessons as mere hindrances to some of the particular great businesses of life which specially occupied her--verse-making, for instance, piano-playing, poaching, or praying, whichever happened to be the predominant interest of the moment. But now, on a sudden, the care of her person became of extraordinary importance. All the hints, good and bad, she had had on the subject recurred to her, and she began to put them into practice systematically. She threw the clothes back from her bed to air it the moment she got up, that it might be fresh and sweet to sleep in. Her little bath had hitherto been used somewhat irregularly, but now she fetched hot and cold water for herself, and bathed every day. She brushed her hair glossy, and tightened her stays to make her waist small, and she was sorely dissatisfied because her boots did not pinch her feet. She began to take great care of her hands too, and would do no dusting without gloves on, or dirty work of any kind that was calculated to injure them. She used a parasol when she could, and if she got sunburnt bathing or boating, she washed her face in buttermilk at night, fetched from Fairholm regularly for the purpose. The minds and habits of the young are apt to form themselves in this way out of suggestions let fall by all kinds of people, the worst and most foolish as well as the wisest and best.

Beth longed that morning for something new and smart to wear. Her old black things looked so rusty in the spring sunshine, she could not satisfy herself with anything she had. All Aunt Victoria's possessions were hers, and she examined her boxes, looking for something to enliven her own sombre dress, and found some lace which she turned into a collar and cuffs and sewed on. When she saw herself in the glass with this becoming addition to her dress, her face brightened at the effect. She knew that Aunt Victoria would have been pleased to see her look like that--she was always pleased when Beth looked well; and now, when Beth recollected her sympathy, all the great fountain of love in her brimmed over, and streamed away in happy little waves, to break about the dear old aunt somewhere on the foreshore of eternity, and to add, perhaps, who knows how or what to her bliss.

When Beth went down to breakfast, she was very hungry, but there was only one little bloater, which must be left for mamma to divide with Bernadine. There was not much butter either, so Beth took her toast nearly dry, and her thin coffee with very little milk and no sugar in it, also for economical reasons; but the coffee was hot, and she was happy. Her happiness bubbled up in bright little remarks, which brightened her mother too.

"Mamma," said Beth, taking advantage of her mood, "it's a poor heart that never rejoices. Let's have a holiday, you and I, to celebrate the summer."

"But the summer hasn't come," Mrs. Caldwell objected, smiling.

"But summer is coming, is coming," Beth chanted, "and I want to make a song about it."

"You make a song!" Bernadine exclaimed. "Why, you can't spell summer."

Beth made a face at her. "I know you want a holiday, mamma," she resumed. "Come, confess! I work you to death. And there's church to-day at eleven, and I want to go."

"Well, if you want to go to church," said Mrs. Caldwell, relieved.

Beth did not wait to hear the end of the sentence.

She went to the drawing-room first, and sat down at the little rosewood piano with a volume of Moore's "Lalla Rookh" open before her.

"From the mountain's warbling fount I come,"

she chanted, with her eyes fixed on the words, but she played as if she were reading notes. She wove all the poems she loved to music in this way, and played and sang them softly to herself by the hour together.

The Lenten service in the church at the end of the road was but poorly attended. There were not more than a dozen people present; but Beth, seated beside the door, enjoyed it. She was all fervour now, and every emotional exercise was a pleasure.

After the service she strolled down the quaintly irregular front street, which was all red brick houses with small window-panes, three to the width of the window, except where an aspiring tradesman had introduced plate-glass and a vulgar disguise of stucco, which converted the warm-toned bricks into commonplace colourless greyness. It was on one side of this street that the principal shops were, and Beth stood for some time gazing at a print in a stationer's window--a lovely little composition of waves lapping in gently towards a sheltered nook on a sandy beach. Beth, wafted there instantly, heard the dreamy murmur and felt the delicious freshness of the sea, yet the picture did not satisfy her.

"I should want somebody," she broke out in herself. "I should want somebody--somebody to lay my head against. Ah, dear Lord, how I hate to be alone!"

Old Lady Benyon, at her post of observation in the big bow-window at the top of the street, saw Beth standing there, and speculated. "Gracious, how that child grows!" she exclaimed. "She'll be a woman directly."

As Beth went on down the street, she began to suffer from that dull irresolute feeling which comes of a want of purpose. She wanted a companion and she wanted an object. Presently she met a young man who looked at her intently as they approached each other, and as he looked his face brightened. Beth's pulse quickened pleasurably and her colour rose. Her steps became buoyant. She held up her head and glowed with animation, but was unaware of the source of this sudden happy stimulant, nor did she try to discover it. She was living her experiences then, by-and-by she would reflect upon them, then inevitably she would reproduce them, and all without intention. As the sun rises, as the birds build, so would she work when the right time came. Talent may manufacture to order, but works of genius are the outcome of an irresistible impulse, a craving to express something for its own sake and the pleasure of expressing it, with no thought of anything beyond. It is talent that thinks first of all of applause and profits, and only works to secure them--works for the result, for the end in view--never for love of the work.

Beth's heart had no satisfaction at home; she had no friend of her own sex to fill it as most girls have, and a nature like hers, rich in every healthy possibility, was bound to crave for love early. It was all very well for her mother and society as it is constituted to ignore the needs of nature; by Beth herself they would not be ignored. In most people, whether the senses or the intellect will have the upper-hand is very much a matter of early training.

Because she was a girl, Beth's intellect had been left to stagnate for want of proper occupation or to run riot in any vain pursuit she might happen upon by accident, while her senses were allowed to have their way, unrestrained by any but the vaguest principles. Thanks to her free roving outdoor habits, her life was healthy if it were not happy, and she promised to mature early. Youth and sex already began to hang out their signals--clear skin, slim figure, light step, white teeth, thick hair, bright eyes. She was approaching her blossoming time, the end of her wintry childhood, the beginning of a promising spring. It was natural and right that her pulses should quicken and her spirits rise when a young man met her with a friendly glance. Her whole being was suffused with the glory of love, and her mind held the vision; but it was of an abstract kind as yet, not inspired by man. It was in herself that the emotion arose, in happy exuberance, and bubbled over, expending itself in various forms of energy until it should find one object to concentrate itself upon. There comes a time to all healthy young people when Nature says: "Mate, my children, and be happy." If the impulse come prematurely, it is not the young people, but the old ones that are to blame; they should have seen to it that the intellect, which acts as a curb on the senses when properly trained and occupied, developed first. Beth was just at the age when the half-educated girl has nothing to distract her but her own emotions. Her religion, and the young men who are beginning to make eyes at her, interest her then about equally, and in much the same way; she owes to each a pleasurable sensation. If she can combine the two under one roof, as in church, they suffice and her happiness is complete. It cannot be said, however, that the senses awoke before the intellect in Beth; but because of the irregularities of her training, the want of discipline and order, they took possession of her first.

Passing a shop-window, Beth caught a reflection of herself in the polished pane, and saw that her skirt hung badly: it dipped too much behind. She stopped to gauge the length, that she might alter it when she went in, and then she noticed the pretty light summer things displayed in the window, and ached to possess some. She was miserably conscious of her old ill-cut skirt, more especially of the invisible dirt on it, and she did so yearn for something new and sweet and clean. Her mother had a bill at that shop--should she--should she just go in and ask about prices? No, she could not in that horrid old frock; the shopman would not respect her. She had intended to go down to the sands and sit by the sea, and wait for things to come to her, by which she meant ideas; but the discomfort of mind set up by that glimpse of her uncouth clothes, and the horrible sense of their want of freshness, gained upon her, and drove her in hurriedly. Beth would have expressed the dainty refinement of her mind in her dress had she had the means; but it is difficult to be dainty on nothing a year.

The rest of the day she spent in her room sewing. She found that one of Aunt Victoria's summer silks would fit her with very little alteration, and set to work to make a Sunday frock of it. As she worked she thought of the dear old lady, and of the hours they had sat there together sewing, and of their teas and talks. She would not have known how to alter that dress but for Aunt Victoria; it made her both sad and glad to remember how much she owed her.

Later in the day, after dinner, when the sun had set and the darkness was beginning to gather, Beth became aware of a curious sensation. It was as if she were expecting something delightful to happen, and yet, at the same time, was all aching with anxiety. Then suddenly she remembered her dream. The old pear-tree was a pyramid of blossom. Should she go and see the white foam-flowers by moonlight? The moon had risen.

She stole out into the garden, anxious above everything to go alone. Her heart throbbed curiously; what did she expect? The young moon hung in an indigo sky, and there were some white stars. The air was fresh and fragrant as it had been in her dream, but there was less light. She had to peer into the shade beneath the pear-tree to see--to see what? If there were any one there? Of course there was no one there! How could there be? She did not trust herself closer, however, until she was quite sure that there was nothing to encounter but the trunk of the tree. Then she went bravely, and reclined on the see-saw board, looking up through the black branches to the clustering blossoms that shone so white on the topmost twigs in the moonlight. And presently she began to glow with a great feeling of exultation. It began in her chest, and spread, as from a centre, all over her. The details of her dream recurred to her, the close clasp, the tender kiss, and she thrilled again at the recollection.

But, for the present, the recollection was enough.

Chapter XXVI

On Sunday morning Beth went down to breakfast dressed in Aunt Victoria's light lavender silk, remodelled to suit her; and very becoming she had made it. But Mrs. Caldwell called it an absurd costume for a girl of her age, and said she looked ridiculously over-dressed; so Beth went back to her room disheartened, and reappeared at church-time, with drooping mouth, in the old black frock she usually wore on Sundays.

Vainly she tried to rouse herself to any fervour of worship during the first part of the service. She felt ill-dressed, uncomfortable, dissatisfied, and would have been glad to quarrel with anybody. Then suddenly, during the singing of a hymn, she ceased to be self-conscious. All the trouble left her, and was succeeded by that curious thrill of happy expectation which came to her continually at this time. She looked about her and saw friendly faces where before she had seen nothing but criticism and disdain of her shabby clothes.

Those were the days of pew-letting. The nearer you sat to the pulpit, the higher the price of the pew, and the better your social position. Mrs. Caldwell was obliged to content herself with a cheap seat in one of the side aisles near the door, so the vicar had never called on her. He only called on a few front rows. His own pew was high in the chancel, where all the parish could gaze at his exhausted wife and her increasing family. His pupils used to sit in the pew opposite; but the bishop, having received complaints from the neglected parish, had lately interfered and stopped the school; and henceforth Mr. Richardson was only to be allowed to have one pupil. Mr. Richardson determined to make him profitable.

From where she sat Beth could see the vicar's pew in the chancel, and she had noticed a tall slender youth sitting at the far end, near the vestry door, but he did not interest her at first; now, however, she looked at him again, and wondered who he was, and presently she found that he was gazing at her intently. Then their eyes met, and it was as if a spark of fire had kindled a glow in her chest, high up near the throat, where the breath catches. She looked down at her book, but had no thought on the subject at all--she was all one sensation. Light had come to her, a wondrous flood of amber light, that blotted out the common congregation and all besides, but him and her. Yet she could hardly sit through the service, and the moment it was over she fled. Her great desire was to be alone, if that could be called solitude which contained all the satisfaction of the closest companionship. All the time that she was flying, however, she felt that she was being pursued, and there was the strangest excitement and delight in the sensation. But she never looked behind. She did not dare to.

She made for the cliffs on the Fairholm estate, and when she came to them her intention was to hide herself. There was a nook she knew, some distance on, a grassy space on the cliff side, not visible either from above or below. She climbed down to it, and there ensconced herself. Beneath was a little cove sheltered from the north and south by the jutting cliffs, and floored with the firmest sand just then, for the tide was out. Beth was lying in the shadow of the cliff, but, beyond, the sun shone, the water sparkled, the sonorous sea-voice sounded from afar, while little laughing waves broke out into merry music all along the shore. Beth, lying on her face with her arms folded in front of her and her cheek resting on them, looked out, lithe, young, strong, bursting with exultation, but motionless as a manifestation of inanimate nature. That was a beautiful pause in her troublous day. Never mind if it only endured for an hour, there was certainty in it, a happy certainty. From the moment their eyes had met she was sure, she knew he would come.

The little waves rang out their laughing carillons, light grace notes to the deep solemn melody of earth and air and sea; and Beth, watching with dilated pupils and set countenance, listened intently. And presently, below, on her left, round the headland some one came striding. Beth's bright eyes flashed with a vivid interest, but she shrank back, flattening herself down on the rank grass, as though thereby she made herself the more invisible.

The young man stopped, took off his hat and wiped his forehead, glanced this way and that round the cove and out to sea, like one bewildered, who has expected to find something which is not there, and begins to look for it in the most unlikely places. Hesitating, disappointed, uncertain, he moved a little on in one direction, a little back in the other, then, drawn by a sudden impulse, that most familiar manifestation of the ruling force which disposes of us all, we know not how, he walked up the cove with swift, strong, buoyant steps, as if with a purpose, swinging his hat in his hand as he came, and threw himself full length on the smooth, hard, shining sand, and sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction, as though he knew himself within reach of what he sought. In certain states of ecstatic feeling a faculty is released which takes cognisance of things beyond the ken of our beclouded intellects, and although in the language of mind he did not know, it may be that from the region of pure spirit there had come to him a subtle perception, not to be defined, which made it more desirable to be there on that spot alone than anywhere else in the world with no matter whom.

He was a young man of seventeen or eighteen, slenderly built, with well-shaped feet, and long, delicate, nervous hands. His face was shaved clean of the down of his adolescence, so that his somewhat sallow complexion looked smooth to effeminacy. His features were regular and refined, and his fine brown curly hair was a shade lighter in colour than his skin--which produced a noticeable effect. His pale china-blue eyes, too, showed the same peculiarity, which Beth, looking down on him through the fringe of long rank grass in front of her, remarked, but uncritically, for every inch of him was a joy to her.

She was passive. But the young man soon grew restless on his sandy couch. He changed his position a dozen times, then suddenly got on his knees, and heaped up a mound of sand, which, having patted it and pressed it down as hard as it would set, he began to model. Beth held her breath and became rigid with interest as she saw the shapeless mass gradually transformed into some semblance of a human figure, conventional as an Egyptian statue. When the young man had finished, he sat beside the figure for some time, looking fixedly out to sea. Then he turned to his work once more, and, after surveying it critically, he began to make alterations, trying to improve upon what he had done; but the result did not please him, and in a fit of exasperation he fell upon the figure and demolished it. This seemed such a wanton outrage to Beth that she uttered a low cry of remonstrance involuntarily, but the exclamation mingled with the murmur of wind and wave, and was lost in it. The young man looked disconcerted himself and ashamed, too, as a child does when it has broken something in a rage and repents; and presently he began to heap the mound once more. When it was done, he stretched himself on the sand and shut his eyes, and for a long time Beth lay still, looking down upon him.

All at once, however, the noise of the water became importunate. She had not been aware of it at all since the young man appeared, but now it came into her consciousness with the distinctness of a sudden and unexpected sound, and she looked in that direction. The last time she had noticed the tide it was far out; but now, where all had been sand beyond the sheltered cove, all was water. The silver line stretched from headland to headland, and was still advancing. Already there was no way of escape by the sands, and the cove itself would be a bay in a little while--a bay without a boat! If he did not wake and bestir himself, the callous waves would come and cover him. Should she call? She was shy of taking the initiative even to save his life, and hesitated a moment, and in that moment there came a crash. The treacherous clay cliff crumbled, and the great mass of it on which she was lying slid down bodily on to the shining sand. The young man started up, roused by the rumbling. Had he been a few feet nearer to the cliff he must have been buried alive. He and Beth stared at each other stupidly, neither realising what had happened for the first few minutes. He was the first to recover himself.

"Are you hurt?" he asked with concern, going forward to help her.

"I don't know," she answered, staggering to her feet. "No, I think not," she added. "I'm a little shaken. I'll sit down."

The sitting would have been a tumble had he not caught her in his arms and held her up. Beth felt deadly sick for an instant, then she found herself reclining on the sand, with the young man bending over her, looking anxiously into her face.

"You're faint," he said.

"Is that faint?" she answered. "What a ghastly sensation! But there is something I want to remember." She shut her eyes, then opened them, and looked up at him with a puzzled expression. "It's very odd, I can't remember," she complained.

The young man could not help her. He looked up at the cliff. "What were you doing up there?" he asked.

"What were you doing down there?" she rejoined.

"I followed you," he answered simply. "I saw you come this way, then I lost sight of you; but I thought you would be somewhere on the sands, because the cliffs are private property."

"The owner is an uncle of mine," said Beth. "I come when I like."

Then they looked into each other's faces shyly, and looked away again, smiling but confused.

"Why did you follow me?" said Beth. "You did not know me."

"No, but I wanted to," he answered readily. "Where were you?"

"Lying on a shelf where that scar is now, looking down on you."

"Then you saw me model that figure?"

"And the cliff fell," Beth put in irrelevantly to cover a blush. "It often falls. We're always having landslips here. And I think we'd better move away from it now," she added, rising. "People are killed sometimes."

"But tell me," he said, detaining her. "Didn't you know I was following you?"

Beth became embarrassed.

"You did," he persisted, "and you ran away. Why did you run away?"

"I couldn't help it," Beth confessed; then she uttered an exclamation. "Look! look! the tide! What shall we do?"

He turned and saw their danger for the first time.

"Our only way of escape is by the cliffs," Beth said, "unless a boat comes by."

"And the cliffs are perpendicular just here," he rejoined, after carefully surveying them.

They looked into each other's faces blankly.

"I can't swim--can you?" he asked.

Beth shook her head.

"What is to be done?" he exclaimed.

"There is nothing to be done, I think," she answered quietly. "We may see a boat, but hardly anybody ever comes along the cliffs. We might shout, though."

They did so until they were hoarse, but there was no response, and the tide came creeping up over the sand.

"How calm it is!" Beth observed.

He looked at her curiously. "I don't believe you're a bit afraid," he said. "I'm in a desperate funk."

"I don't believe we're going to be drowned, and I always know what's coming," she answered. Then after a little she asked him his name.

"Alfred," he answered; "and yours?"

"Beth--Beth Caldwell. Alfred!--I like Alfred."

"I like Beth. It's queer, but I like it all the better for that. It's like you."

"Do you think me queer?" Beth asked, prepared to resent the imputation.

"I think you uncommon," he replied.

Beth reflected for a little. "What is your full name?" she asked finally.

"Alfred Cayley Pounce," he replied. "My father gave me the name of Alfred that I might always remember I was A Cayley Pounce. But my ambition is to be The Cayley Pounce," he added with a nervous little laugh.

Beth compressed her lips, and looked at the rising tide. The next wave broke at their feet, and both involuntarily stepped back. Behind them was the mass of earth that had fallen from the cliff. It had descended in a solid wedge without scattering. Alfred climbed on to it, and helped Beth up. "We shall be a little higher here, at all events," he said.

Beth looked along the cliff; the high-water mark was still above their heads. "It's getting exciting, isn't it?" she observed. "But I don't feel nasty. Having you here makes--makes a difference, you know."

"If you have to die with me, how shall you feel?" he asked.

"I shall feel till my last gasp that I would much rather have lived with you," she answered emphatically.

A wavelet splashed up against the clay on which they were standing. He turned to the cliff and tore at it in a sort of exasperation, trying to scoop out footholes with his hands by which they might climb up; but the effort was futile, the soft shale crumbled as he scooped, and there was no hold to be had on it. His face had grown grey in the last few minutes, and his eyes were strained and anxious.

"I wonder how you feel," Beth said. "I think I resent the fate that threatens us more than I fear it. If my life must end now, it will be so unfinished."

He made no reply, and she stood looking out to sea thoughtfully. "It's Sunday," she observed at last. "There won't be many boats about to-day."

The water had begun to creep up on to their last refuge; it washed over her feet as she spoke, and she shrank back. Alfred put his arm round her protectingly.

"Do you still believe we shall not be drowned?" he said.

"Yes," she answered. "But, even if we were, it wouldn't be the end of us. We have been here in this world before, you and I, and we shall come again."

"What makes you think such queer things?" he asked.

"I don't think them," she answered. "I know them. The things I think are generally all wrong; but the things I know about--that come to me like this--are right. Only I can't command them. One comes to me now and again like a flash, as that one did down there just now when I said we should not be drowned; but if I put a question to myself, I can get no answer."

The water had crept up over their feet while they were speaking. It was coming in at a great rate, but there were no waves to splash them, only a sort of gentle heave and ripple that brought it on insensibly, so that it had lapped up to the cliff behind them before they suspected it. Beth shivered as it rose around her.

"It's a good thing I changed my dress," she said suddenly. "That summer silk would certainly have been spoilt."

Alfred held her tight, and looked down into her face, but said nothing.

"I'm thinking so many things," Beth broke out again. "I'm glad it's a still day for one thing, and not freezing cold. The cold would have numbed us, and we should have been swept off our feet if there had been any waves. I want to ask you so many things. Why did you make that figure on the sand?"

"I want to be a sculptor," he said; "but my people object, and they won't let me have the proper materials to model in, so I model in anything."

The water was almost up to Beth's waist. She had to turn and cling to him to keep her footing. She hid her face on his shoulder, and they stood so some time. The water rose above her waist. Alfred was head and shoulders taller than she was. He realised that she would be covered first.

"I must hold her up somehow," he muttered.

Beth raised her head. "Alfred," she began, "we're neither of us cowards, are we? You are hating to die, I can see, but you're not going to make an exhibition of yourself to the elements; and I'm hating it, too--I'm horribly anxious--and the cold makes me sob in my breath as the water comes up. It is like dying by inches from the feet up; but while my head is alive, I defy death to make me whimper."

"Do you despair, then?" he exclaimed, as if there had been some safeguard in her certainty.

"I have no knowledge at this moment," she answered. "I am in suspense. But that is nothing. The things that have come to me like that on a sudden positively have always been true, however much I might doubt and question beforehand. I did know at that moment that we should not be drowned; but I don't know it now. My spirit can't grasp the idea, though, of being here in this comfortable body talking to you one moment, and the next being turned out of house and home into eternity alone."

"Not alone," he interrupted, clasping her closer. "I'll hold you tight through all eternity."

Beth looked up at him, and then they kissed each other frankly, and forgot their danger for a blissful interval.

They were keeping their foothold with difficulty now. The last heave of the tide came up to Beth's shoulder, and took her breath away. Had it not been for the support of the cliff behind them, they could not have kept their position many minutes. But the cliff itself was a danger, for the sea was eating into it, and might bring down another mass of it at any moment. The agony of death, the last struggle with the water, had begun.

"I hate it," Beth gasped, "but I'm not afraid."

The steady gentle heave of the sea was like the breathing of a placid sleeper. It rose round them once more, up, up, over Beth's head. They clung closer to each other and to the cliff, staggering and fighting for their foothold. Then it sank back from them, then slowly came again, rising in an irregular wavy line all along the face of the cliffs with a sobbing sound as if in its great heart it shrank from the cruel deed it was doing--rose and fell, rose and fell again.

Alfred's face was grey and distorted. He groaned aloud.

"Are you suffering?" Beth exclaimed. "Oh, I wish it was over."

She had really the more to suffer of the two, for every wave nearly covered her; but her nerve and physique were better than his, and her will was of iron. The only thing that disturbed her fortitude were the signs of distress from him.

Gently, gently the water came creeping up and up again. It had swelled so high the last time that Beth was all but gone; and now she held her breath, expecting for certain to be overwhelmed. But, after a pause, it went down once more, then rose again, and again subsided.

Alfred stood with shut eyes and clenched teeth, blindly resisting. Beth kept her wits about her.

"Alfred!" she cried on a sudden, "I was right! I was not deceived! Stand fast! The tide is on the turn."

He opened his eyes and stared about him in a bewildered way. His face was haggard and drawn from the strain, his strength all but exhausted; he did not seem to understand.

"Hold on!" Beth cried again. "You'll be a big sculptor yet. The tide has turned. It's going out, Alfred, it's going out. It washed an inch lower last time. Keep up! Keep up! O Lord, help me to hold him! help me to hold him! It's funny," she went on, changing with one of her sudden strange transitions from the part of actor to that of spectator, as it were. "It's funny we neither of us prayed. People in danger do, as a rule, they say in the books; but I never even thought of it."

The tide had seemed to come in galloping like a racehorse, but now it crawled out like a snail; and they were both so utterly worn, that when at last the water was shallow enough, they just sank down and sat in it, leaning against each other, and yearning for what seemed to them the most desirable thing on earth at that moment--a dry spot on which to stretch themselves out and go to sleep.

"I know now what exhaustion is," said Beth, with her head on Alfred's shoulder.

"Do you know, Beth," he rejoined with a wan smile, "you've been picking up information ever since you fell acquainted with me here. I can count a dozen new experiences you've mentioned already. If you go on like this always, you'll know everything in time."

"I hope so!" Beth muttered. "Fell acquainted with you, isn't bad; but I wonder if tumbled wouldn't have been better----"

She dozed off uncomfortably before she could finish the sentence. He had settled himself with his head against the uncertain cliff, which beetled above them ominously; but they were both beyond thinking or caring about it. Vaguely conscious of each other, and of the sea-voice that gradually grew distant and more distant as the water went out beyond the headland, leaving them stranded in the empty cove, they rested and slept uneasily, yet heavily enough to know little of the weary while they had to wait before they could make their escape.

For it was not until the sun had set and the moon hung high above the sea in a sombre sky, that at last they were able to go.